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There are people who think looking at the structures of power, eg the role of the state, is more useful than looking at propaganda when discussing politics. In

There are people who think looking at the structures of power, eg the role of the state, is more useful than looking at propaganda when discussing politics. In the behaviorist sense that what people do is a better revelation of their beliefs than what they say. In that perspective, we can look at progressivism, communism, and fascism as different perspectives on technocratic managerialism — all of whom experienced similar problems, eg, purging/sterilizing undesirables via eugenics programs.

vidarh 1y ago
The Bolsheviks literally carried out a coup against socialists, and murdered a long range of socialists and communists who took up weapons against them to try to prevent their dictatorship. In that perspective it's clear that these are not singular ideologies, but sets of ideologies were individual variations often have very little in common.
- zmgsabst 1y ago
  That same experience of the inner party murdering and subjugating the outer party who enabled them played out across multiple communist regimes.
  - vidarh 1y ago
    I wasn't talking about the internal purges in the Bolshevik party.
- cmrdporcupine 1y ago
  I mean... actual Marxists should subject so-called Marxist-Leninist states to a Marxian materialist analysis, as Marx would have expected them to, and would have, himself. Discounting what they called themselves and what their motivations were, and looking at the material causes and effects and the actual reality on the ground. Which is why parent-of-you commenter is missing the mark about my comments. I'm not making a "no true Scotsman" argument, and talking about "those weren't really socialist" blah blah. The reality is that material forces in the early 20th century pushed many places into these forms which looked much like each other, and had little to do with the ideologies held in the head of the parties and people involved and more to do with the combined and uneven nature of the economies of Russia, etc. and the structure of imperialism/colonialism at the time. I'd point the finger back at parent-poster -- it's not about the essences of"progressivism" and "socialism" and "fascism" ideologies having some common net effect, or common DNA. That, too, is unscientific and idealist (in the philosophical sense) and frankly false. It's about what productive forces and the state of the world looked like in the 20s and 30s, which also forced entire societies on trajectories regardless of what the leadership of said countries said about themselves. And circling back, the value of "Trotskyism" as an intellectual current (when it's not debased by weird cultism) is not in the personhood of Trotksy himself or the fact that he somehow was some saintly figure (he was not), but in that he offered up a materialist, Marxist, analysis of what the USSR had become and how it had gotten there. Which had little to do with the people or their ideas, but the material forces that had made those people, their ideas, and their actions possible.
  - zmgsabst 1y ago
    Technocratic managerialism is the common structure between them that channeled societal forces in similar directions — we can’t ignore the structure the governments took in analyzing their outcomes. > The reality is that material forces in the early 20th century pushed many places into these forms which looked much like each other The name of that form is technocratic managerialism — of which progressivism, communism, and fascism are different ideological interpretations of that common form. And they had particular failure modes due to that form.

vidarh 1y ago

The Bolsheviks literally carried out a coup against socialists, and murdered a long range of socialists and communists who took up weapons against them to try to prevent their dictatorship. In that perspective it's clear that these are not singular ideologies, but sets of ideologies were individual variations often have very little in common.

zmgsabst 1y ago
That same experience of the inner party murdering and subjugating the outer party who enabled them played out across multiple communist regimes.
- vidarh 1y ago
  I wasn't talking about the internal purges in the Bolshevik party.
cmrdporcupine 1y ago
I mean... actual Marxists should subject so-called Marxist-Leninist states to a Marxian materialist analysis, as Marx would have expected them to, and would have, himself. Discounting what they called themselves and what their motivations were, and looking at the material causes and effects and the actual reality on the ground. Which is why parent-of-you commenter is missing the mark about my comments. I'm not making a "no true Scotsman" argument, and talking about "those weren't really socialist" blah blah. The reality is that material forces in the early 20th century pushed many places into these forms which looked much like each other, and had little to do with the ideologies held in the head of the parties and people involved and more to do with the combined and uneven nature of the economies of Russia, etc. and the structure of imperialism/colonialism at the time. I'd point the finger back at parent-poster -- it's not about the essences of"progressivism" and "socialism" and "fascism" ideologies having some common net effect, or common DNA. That, too, is unscientific and idealist (in the philosophical sense) and frankly false. It's about what productive forces and the state of the world looked like in the 20s and 30s, which also forced entire societies on trajectories regardless of what the leadership of said countries said about themselves. And circling back, the value of "Trotskyism" as an intellectual current (when it's not debased by weird cultism) is not in the personhood of Trotksy himself or the fact that he somehow was some saintly figure (he was not), but in that he offered up a materialist, Marxist, analysis of what the USSR had become and how it had gotten there. Which had little to do with the people or their ideas, but the material forces that had made those people, their ideas, and their actions possible.
- zmgsabst 1y ago
  Technocratic managerialism is the common structure between them that channeled societal forces in similar directions — we can’t ignore the structure the governments took in analyzing their outcomes. > The reality is that material forces in the early 20th century pushed many places into these forms which looked much like each other The name of that form is technocratic managerialism — of which progressivism, communism, and fascism are different ideological interpretations of that common form. And they had particular failure modes due to that form.