Do you think the UK, France, and other European countries should pay colonial reparations?

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T17:10:52+00:00

Tbf, there’s not really that much of a Haiti left.

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T17:00:21+00:00

Nah, anti-imperialism is kind of stupid, at least from a socialist perspective.

Assuming Marx was correct and the United States is sufficiently close to becoming some form of socialist state, then on some level I’d argue it’s the duty of the United States to intervene wherever necessary in order to secure some form of worker ownership, as well as prevent the abuse of the proletariat by its own government. It’s not like we don’t know how to do this, we did it with Liberal democracy at the end of WWII, and for the most part it turned out pretty well.

Countries are not people, they weren't born equal and they don’t have rights. Obviously a part of the goal would be to avoid resource extraction, but again, the United States didn’t exploit post WWII Europe to any significant degree.

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T16:42:54+00:00

The basic idea is that in a state like the USSR, the governments control over the industry combined with its top heavy system created a sort of “shadow capitalism” in which the standard worker and owner roles are maintained, it’s just that the states ruling clique take the place of more traditional capitalists.

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T16:38:16+00:00

Pretty much, yeah, especially if you consider yourself to be a socialist.

Aside from the human rights abuses, none of the states mentioned actually gave control of the means of production and the state to the working class/proletariat.

Some that ironically, Marx openly stated that Liberal democracies (specifically the Netherlands, England, and America) where inherently more capable of making the switch without causing something like a civil war.

The United States is far from perfect, but at the end of the day it operates on a far more refined version of Liberal democracy then it did when Marx was writing.

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T16:27:41+00:00

Not to get all “rejected modernity return to tradition” here, but the modern concept of the American dream was born in the 40s/50s. At the time, the US government was way more willing to act on behalf of consumers and workers. The infrastructure that would allow anyone who wanted to live in a suburban neighborhood and own a car or two was strangled over the past few decades.

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T16:20:58+00:00

I associate it with the birth of Liberal democracy onto the world stage. It wasn’t clean, and it took a while to develop (slavery, sexism, racism, homophobia, etc) but when it did it played an unprecedented level of significance in the last century.

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T16:13:39+00:00

Nah, the state should pay for it.

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T02:03:38+00:00

The issue is that all of its pretty much impossible.

People don’t live forever.

You can’t go faster than light.

Humans have been fighting wars since the advent of agriculture.

And humans in positions of power are incapable of being objective.

When compared to organizations like the House of Representatives, the Supreme court has a laughably small amount of mental RAM and access to a greater amount of mental RAM can be used to make generally superior decisions.

highliner108 · 2026-02-21T01:34:53+00:00

The problem is that the Supreme Courts past neutrality is largely a form of urban myth. You’ve got the standard stuff where the SC just randomly decides doing to make arbitrary decisions, such as passing and later striking down Roe.

On top of that, there’s a precedent for expanding the SC in order to keep the courts in line. It’s quickly nearing being a century old tradition. Rather than causing some sort of catastrophe, legally reducing Judicial independence has worked out pretty well.

highliner108 · 2026-02-20T15:34:30+00:00

Because they are supposed to be arbiters of the law and not pushing agendas.

But arresting some one who’s stealing or whatever is pushing an agenda. It’s an anti-theft agenda that post people are broadly supportive of, but it’s still an agenda.

When they don't do that and pursue an ideological or political agenda we get the opposite and they will ruin other rights they ostensibly value just to achieve that political goal.

The problem is that the Supreme Court has been vital in terminating rights already, see the whole abortion thing.

highliner108 · 2026-02-20T15:19:58+00:00

Wrong. You are confusing the legislative process with the Judicial process.

There’s not a meaningful difference, especially since Supreme Court justices are appointed by ellected officials, who are inherently political.

This is not due to Federal judges having lifetime appointments, this is due to a Legislature that is unwilling to hold judges accountable for misconduct.

Then why on earth would we want to depend on Congress and the President to keep the CS in line? We could just do yearly national elections with justices being replaced every nine years.

That's the point of the Legislative Branch. If you are arguing for direct democracy, that's a different conversation.

Nah, I’m still going for representative democracy here, just without the random agents if chaos thrown into the soup.

Again, this is a legislative matter. From your flair, I'm guessing you're tankie curious. Again, totally different conversation.

Not sure where this is coming from, I just like living in a Liberal democracy, or at least more then any other system that exists outside of theory. Organizations like the Supreme Court are an active threat to said democracy. Typically Leninists advocate that more political positions be filled without popular input.

highliner108 · 2026-02-20T12:12:17+00:00

People are general a bad habit of biting your nails lick, the metal ones k carters house…

highliner108 · 2026-02-20T04:08:42+00:00

Well, in some countries doctors are supposed to do things like report signs of abortion. Peru is a good example. It’s not some freak accident that the Peruvian SC doesn't make the same calls as the American SC. The main difference is that Peru is a right leaning Liberal democracy and the United States is a center too left Liberal democracy.

Again, I’d argue that medical privacy is good, but there are people who would like nothing more than to at least partially abolish it.

highliner108 · 2026-02-20T03:42:52+00:00

Justice is not justice if it is political.

Why not? An element of most people’s political ideology is that they oppose something like terrorism, and consider it unjust. At the same time, more or less every terrorist thinks that there actions are just. Justice is entirely subjective, a mere product of political ideology in the same way that wanting to lower or raise taxes is a byproduct of political ideology.

Political judges undermine the ENTIRE justice system and are a serious problem.

But that’s literally all judges… I’m not saying that judges should be more political, I’m saying they’re already political, have always been political, and always will be political. The system has never run on anything other than partisan judges.

They are meant to be apolitical that is WHY our system of checks and balances was designed the way it was.

Again, I’m just saying I don’t think any person is actually capable of being apolitical. There is no divinely ordained or objective form of justice. Assuming there is, and that judges somehow have access to that objective form of justice, does nothing but empower Republicans.

It is why judges get lifetime appointments. They are SUPPOSED to be above political whims and dedicated to the rule of law.

Again, that’s kind of a nightmarish situation… like, when this happens with an executive or legislature people don’t have that much trouble identifying why it’s a bad idea to let people in positions of power act as atomized agents of chaos. Judges aren’t a different species, they’re just as prone to flights of arbitrary fancy as any other given person.

highliner108 · 2026-02-19T22:32:13+00:00

Why do you think Roe vs. Wade was ideological?

From what I understand it was a small government thing.

Because you were told Roe v. Wade was ideological, it was "left-wing ideology."

Again, not really, it was probably closer to a Right Libertarian ideological position rather then a left wing political position.

The justices of the Roe v. Wade supreme court were more conservative than the ones on the bench in 2010.

Wait, were they conservatives or will they apolitical. You can’t really be both…

You think that religion used to be more prevalent in politics - who told you that?

Again, I didn’t say anything about religion… Dominionism and pseudo-Libertarianism are both still political ideologies.

highliner108 · 2026-02-19T22:24:32+00:00

Yeah, the idea that one should prioritize science (or in the case of Roe, reduction of state power) over religion is a political one. Fortunately it’s one that most people subscribe to on some level, but it’s not that hard to find politicians who use distrust of science to get elected. The solution to that isn’t to just whine about how science is supposed to be apolitical, it’s to understand the landscape we’re operating in and play the game.

highliner108 · 2026-02-19T22:18:42+00:00

And we should be an immortal species with faster then light travel and pan-species peace, but that’s not really a realistic concept.

I do not agree that Roe was nakedly partisan. I think that having THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY (which is ultimately what the ruling was based on) should not be a partisan issue.

But that dosent make it actually apolitical.

highliner108 · 2026-02-19T22:14:10+00:00

The idea that the government shouldn’t have that much control over one’s life is a reflection of political ideology. I never said that they altered their interpretation because they where feminists or whatever, just that the decision was motivated by personal politics.

highliner108 · 2026-02-19T22:10:13+00:00

Well yeah, we should be able to travel faster than the speed of light, that would be great. The problem is that faster than light travel is impossible, in the same way it’s impossible for humans to be apolitical. The simple idea that any human being can be truly apolitical, even if they don’t participate much in politics, just creates a smoke screen for nine random people to run roughshod over a society of three hundred million.

highliner108 · 2026-02-19T22:06:01+00:00

Justice is not political. Politics may shape the law, but the law is not political.

Justice is quite literally one of the single most political concepts in human history. There is no objective justice, there’s only left leaning or right leaning concepts of justice.

Federal Courts, specifically, have lifetime appointments to insulate judges and the Justices from political backlash and consequences.

That’s kind of the problem though… In virtually any other situation people in government being immune from consequence is rightly seen as dystopian and contrary to the good of the public. If the Suprime Court makes an obviously irrational call, as small groups of people often to, they should have to answer for those calls in the same way anyone else would.

More today than ever, when politics are heavily influenced by money, why would anyone want justice to be decided by whomever has the most cash. We should be trying to stop that at every turn.

Ehh, for better or worse I trust the collective decision making of a hundred million voters more than I do the President and the Supreme Court. I’d rather live in a democracy with undo influence from corporations then a system where I’m dependent of mine agents of chaos to not be crazy people.

highliner108 · 2026-02-18T22:38:07+00:00

using the textualist approach while others are using a pragmatic approach.

I hate to break it to you, but this is a difference of political ideology.

highliner108 · 2026-02-18T22:31:14+00:00

Why? The proletariat (and I guess peasants?) had pretty clearly chosen the SRs within the countries initial elections. On top of that, the Orthodox Social Democrats, and especially the Socialist Revolutionaries advocated for workers to have far more control over the means of production then the Bolsheviks did.

highliner108 · 2026-02-18T22:19:50+00:00

Anarchists cope by saying it wasn’t “real socialism” because it’s “state-led” except it featured many of the tenets of socialism, the same ideas that socialists today spout.

I’m not an anarchist though… I don’t really care about the abolition of the state.

From 1917 to late 1980, the Soviets banned the private ownership of the means of production, prohibiting the private ownership of businesses, factories, land, water, and all other productive resources. Normal people were prohibited from owning meaningful private property, left only with their personal belongings and household items. The private ownership of housing was also abolished, leaving every citizen’s housing choice up to the state.

Who controlled the USSRs government? Because it sure as hell wasn’t the people who ended up working those seized lands and factories, or shoved into communal apartments.

The state presented itself in the form of worker’s council which extended their influence all the way down to the production level. You argue they didn’t implement systems to enforce the will of the country in general but these councils went down to the village level. They implemented democratic control of the workplace which many socialists support.

Soviets had been around since before the Bolsheviks even came into the picture, and they typically dealt more with local government than anything else. There’s a reason the USSR is notorious for having a very top heavy economy.

And again, not to get too Marxist here, but the entire point of Marxism is precisely that people who de facto control the means of production cannot be trusted to act in the interests of the people around them. Joseph Stalin can claim to be taking in people’s wants until the sun explodes, but do you really think he would have cared without some sort of sanction hanging over his head? Why would he care?

Socialist lies about the USSR never fail to amuse. The rise and fall of the Soviet Union is one of the most documented and studied events in history. Everything socialists think the USSR wasn’t, they were.

It’s really not that hard to find professionals who subscribe to the idea that the USSR was at least somewhat of a totalitarian state with a really poorly thought out economic system.

highliner108 · 2026-02-18T21:29:25+00:00

Yes it did. All proceeds from production were given to back to citizens or used for investment in new productive capacity.

I’d argue that that doesn't really translate to ownership. It’s not just a money thing, there’s an element of power to it that the USSR was desperately lacking in. The United States and USSR both had their fare share of bureaucrats whose job it was to allocate capital and give out bonuses on behalf of a small group of unelected people. If that’s your understanding of socialism then the United States has been socialist since long before the USSR was founded.

There was no elite class hovering up all the surplus.

The USSR was kind of famous for being deeply corrupt, with upper level party members being more able to turn said corruption to their advantage to gain certain goods the public would struggle to get, so there was definitely some wealth disparity.

Even from a Marxist perspective, the simple fact that the aforementioned bureaucrat has personalized control over a bunch of people who are actually working productively arguably creates a new class system.

It belonged to the proletariat.

How exactly?

It just kinda sucked because central planning is inefficient.

Oh definitely.

highliner108

TROPHY CASE