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My ideology - Or what, I actually believe: An updated thread.
For as long as I've been in politics, my ideological goals have been the same, and my core principles can be summed up with two words: Liberty, and equality.
LIBERTY for all peoples and the right for everyone to choose how to live their life so long as they don't harm anyone else, and the right to decide how they're governed and who they're governed by - if anyone at all.
EQUALITY for all people, the creation of a society where no one is disadvantaged by the conditions of their birth, and no one is judged based on aspects of themselves that are immutable, unable to be changed.
Now, for how I actually want to achieve these goals, I believe the best way is to bring democracy into as many aspects of life as possible, which to me includes creating a socialist society. After all, in my view, socialism is - at its core - economic democracy.
As for what kind of socialist I am, I don't really fall into a single "socialist" tendency. While I like the idea of market socialism and I think an economy dominated by co-ops would be an improvement over what we have now, I don't think it's anywhere close to enough.
That is, I don't think we can just replace all corporations with co-ops and call it a day. Though there are some industries that I do think are better left up to the free market - luxuries, for instance - there are other sectors that should not be subject to market forces.
Things like natural monopolies, the exploitation of land and natural resources, or goods and services that are necessary for people to survive. For these things, my preference is decentralized planning, with communities collectively owning the means of production
And management by democratically-elected workers councils. These would preferably not participate in a market, but should that be necessary, the revenue should be put into social wealth funds or other entities that would ensure that the profits benefit the communities.
It's worth mentioning that I view all this as temporary until we can automate all labor and have advanced technologically as to eliminate resource scarcity. After that, it's fully automated luxury communism all the way.
On that note, I should talk about government. Contrary to the impression some people may have of me, I don't consider myself an anarchist, but that's mainly because I think governments of some kind are a necessity, and that I don't think we can go directly to statelessness.
That said, I'm sympathetic to a lot of things anarchists stand for, and I think a state should be as accountable to its people as possible. If a state must exist, it should be federalized, with participatory democracy on the local level, and direct democracy at higher levels.
I'd also like to briefly touch upon the reform or revolution question: Some of my SocDem followers might be disappointed in me for saying this, but I don't think we can achieve socialism, let alone the society I just described, exclusively through reform.
The ownership class has a vested interest in maintaining their power, and I highly doubt they'll just peacefully accept giving up their power. That said, I don't think reformism is useless, and indeed, I think it can be useful in a variety of different ways.
To be specific, I think reformism can help make people's lives better in the short term through easing the worst excesses of capitalism, if only slightly. At its best though, what I think reformism could be good for doing is provoking a reactionary uprising,
And if that should happen, that could be used as a springboard to introduce greater revolutionary change. In other words, I think reformism could possibly be a means to spark a revolution down the line.
Finally, I should talk about the global stage. As most of you probably know right now, I do not like imperialism, and it doesn't matter to me whether that imperialism is coming from Washington, Beijing, Moscow, or even Brussels. It's all bad.
That said, I'm not a full-on non-interventionist. However, I do think interventions should be treated as a nuclear option and only done for humanitarian reasons. In other words, it should only be done if there's an imminent threat to the human rights of people in a country,
And all alternative means of resolving the situation have failed. Intervention should also be something the majority of or the entire international community participates in, it should never be unilateral.
Despite all this, I should say that I do not trust any of the so-called "superpowers" to end imperialism. The United States, China, Russia, the EU - they cannot be trusted to save the world from the very force that they have a vested interest in perpetuating or maintaining.
The only involvement these countries should have in imperialized countries is economic aid - if for no other reason than to pay back all the damage they have caused.
At the end of the day though, I think the only countries that can meaningfully put an end to imperialism are the imperialized countries themselves. What I want to see is a world where these countries band together into blocs to pool their economic power together.
From my point of view, the only way victims of imperialism will ever be able to escape their bonds is to stand together, to unite into entities that can negotiate with the great powers as equals, rather than as subordinates.
And that is why the fact that this is already happening all over the world - notably in Africa and Asia - makes me hopeful for the future of these countries. All I can hope is that none of the imperialist countries try to put a stop to these efforts.
Oh, and a few more things that don't fit anywhere else here:
-Religion is fine, but leave it out of politics
-LGBTQ+ rights are human rights
-Abolish gender
-GMOs are good, and so is nuclear power
-Sex work is work
-Black and indigenous lives matter
-Religion is fine, but leave it out of politics
-LGBTQ+ rights are human rights
-Abolish gender
-GMOs are good, and so is nuclear power
-Sex work is work
-Black and indigenous lives matter
