What's your political compass? - eviltoast

I know, it’s not exactly the best way to measure where you stand politically but I’m just curious what your results are.

I score far left on the economical scale (almost hitting the edge) and about two squares from the center into the authoritarian quarter.

  • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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    10 months ago

    This is my favourite one:

    Usually i think i’m in support for Arcological Garden City State League or Nuclear Powered Platonic Republic, but in the current dangerous times when Neo-Hyborian Anarcho-Barbarism gain more and more followers i tend to look favourably at the Marxist-Cesarist Proletarian Imperium.

    And this answer is slightly more serious than the original compass is.

    • novibe@lemmy.ml
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      10 months ago

      Am I ok if I’m either Inhuman Shamanic Xenofeminism or Star Peoples Interplanetary Piracy? I just really like Dune.

      But I wouldn’t mind to return to monkey and go Post Scarcity Ape Devolution… those fruits do look tasty.

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        I just really like Dune.

        It’s greatest work of sci-fi ever imo, but setting is a horrible dystopia, starting from castrating progress out of humanity and then followed by 10000 years of caste system slavery and even worse things in subsequent millenia.

        • novibe@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          Oh yeah, but it’s a warning right? Like all good sci-fi. How capitalism would devolve into feudalism. Eerily similar to what Yanis Varoufakis talks about nowadays.

          • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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            10 months ago

            I don’t think Herbert meant capitalism in particular, thing that is constantly hammered is more of generic “be wary of tyrants, prophets, empires, theocracies, shady sects” and so on.

            I want to point on something that is marginal in first book, but is a foundation of entire setting and gets back to be relevant in books 4-6, that is how Butlerian Jihad completely fucked up entire humanity by throwing away technological progress, not only more or less dangerous AI (depend on version, Brian Dune have just boring skynet rebellion but Frank early mentions and Dune encyclopedia suggest something rather akin of internal humanity struggle where the bad guys won), but all progress and thus damning humanity to eat its own ass in enternal cycle of feudal atrocities (it’s also undialectical as fuck so from here i know Herbert wasn’t a communist), while still being entirely depend on magic technology and magic drug.

            • lemat_87@lemmygrad.ml
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              10 months ago

              A friend of mine said that only the book 1 was really good, 2 was so so, and the remaining were waste of time (this may be extremely subjective). I had read book 1, do you recommend to read 2-6?

              • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                It’s greatest work of sci-fi ever imo

                I can repeat this as many times as needed. Book 1 isn’t even the best of original 6, 4th is the one. 5 and 6 are considerably weaker though.

                • lemat_87@lemmygrad.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  All right, I keep reading. BTW – I finished volume one of «Selected works» of Marx and Engels, which you have recommended to me, thanks!

            • novibe@lemmy.ml
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              10 months ago

              I do love how the foundations of the story are “hidden” in some ways, mysterious even to the most informed characters in the series. But yeah, I agree in all, specially that Herbert was not a communist. He was an anarchist, likely an individualist, but still he was a pretty good sci-fi writer lmao

              Still, I do feel the criticisms of capitalism are quite clear. The CHOAM, how the emperor rules through it… it’s quite on the nose imo.

              In a way it’s quite Leninist. Capital turns monopolistic, and then turns imperialistic. It just became REAL Imperial y’know.

              • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                Except CHOAM is not why Emperor rule. In fact, Emperor do not really rule, not more than the Holy Roman Emperors ruled. Dune Empire system was interlocking system of mutual dependences:

                1. Landsraad hold the majority of people and means of production, but is disunited as only loose organisation of feudal lords can be. They are also the most independent, since overwhelming most of empire is self-sufficient feudal planets.
                2. Emperor have the biggest army and have shares in trade but do not hold any means of production, his real function is being figurehead at the top and (more real) keeping the nobles from disrupting the system as enforcer of the Great Convention.
                3. Spacing Guild control space travel, and keep interplanetary wars from happening, but nothing else (especially not spice) and therefore despite being most outright powerful faction, is also the one most interested in keeping status quo.
                4. CHOAM looks like capitalist, but it’s at most protocapitalist, it’s what Marx described as merchant capital, and it is form that exist in feudalism. More similar to late medieval Italian merchant houses than to any modern corporation. Note that financial capital is controlled by Guild in the setting, yet another fitting sign of protocapitalist formation. Again, when the most of empire is primitive feudal planets, and commodity production is not primary form of production, CHOAM cannot have deciding power, it can bring in luxuries at best.
                5. Bene Gesserit, Bene Tleilax, Suk Academy, Mentat School, Ginaz School (and in reality also Ix) are organisations with significant influence but not a big players, even though Bene Gesserit and Bene Tleilax have huge ambitions.

                All that was puposefully set up in the Great Convention. Overall it’s a FEUDAL system, not capitalist.

                • novibe@lemmy.ml
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                  10 months ago

                  I do agree. But it doesn’t feel like it’s a pre-capitalist feudal system, or a proto-capitalist one. It feels more like a post-capitalist feudal system. The structures of capitalism are there, but shifted in a way to favour the rentier class much more, to the point they became new feudal lords. Very similar to what is happening right now.

                  Sure, commodity production is not the center of the economy, it’s rent seeking. But still the rulers are descendants of a hyper capitalist class that came to own everything and with hyper-monopoly came rent seeking. I would argue something like the Spacing Guild to be an evolution of what Amazon could become if left unchecked to completely monopolize “the internet” and logistics.

  • 🏳️‍⚧️ 新星 [she/they]@lemmygrad.ml
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    10 months ago

    Any test that truly intends to capture the full range of possibilities needs more dimensions.

    Something like https://8values.github.io/ maybe could be taken with a degree of seriousness if you’re actually wondering what label might fit

    Even that model isn’t complete — instead of treating Marxism and liberalism as ideologies, it should treat them as paradigms and try to determine whether you fit into realism, liberalism, constructivism, Marxism, or some degree of synthesis of these

      • PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        Huh i was pretty sceptical seeing some of the questions were wrongly or ambigiously formulated, but i actually got Marxism-Leninism as result which makes it the best of such tests ever.

      • Imnecomrade@lemmygrad.ml
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        10 months ago

        My results

        To be honest, I answered often in the middle, such as for nationalist questions, which I would disagree with if it is considering imperialist countries, but agree with if it is considering colonized countries. A lot of my answers depended on context, and I would vote either way depending on the situation, consequences, and alternatives.

        • JucheBot1988@lemmygrad.ml
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          10 months ago

          I got “Marxist-Leninist:”

          • Very revolutionary
          • Very scientific
          • Very centralist
          • Neutral on international vs. national, leaning more international
          • Very productivist (yay Deng!)
          • Neutral on conservative vs. progressive (not sure what that was about – maybe because I was in the middle on abortion, to allow for Stalin and modern Nicaragua?)

          I’d certainly call myself a Marxist-Leninist, but there are some weird things about this quiz.

  • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    I’m perfectly in the centre, but the two extremes of my compass are totalitarian collectivism and egoist individualism. There is no second axis.

    • voight [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      You need to read volume 3 of Capital, which covers rents and debts more thoroughly, then read The Dialectics of Dependency by Ruy Mauro Marini

    • voight [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      centrist

      Where on this axis is thinking that someone saying London buoys up the GDP of the rest of the country is saying it’s a good thing? When I’m also saying the rest is poorer than the deep south 🇺🇸🍔🦅🗽?

      GDP is a heavily inflated (by rents and debts and financial assets and shit like that) statistic, when I say London is a financial capital like NYC, Chicago, LA, and such, I am also talking about incredibly poverty stricken regions with high rents (for living). London has very high rent coming in internationally too. Also there are other classic dynamics like rural-urban migration for work which are very shitty for people idk read Wallerstein bruv. m8

      It’s like you can’t disagree with anyone on here without them trying to disagree with everything you say & trying to categorically denounce your motivation for posting (being silly while burning Israel to the ground) 🌞

      • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        I never said you thought it was a good thing, I told you you’re an idiot for thinking it automatically makes eastern Europe all of the poorest areas of Europe. Like obviously you understand that the wealth of Britain is within London, so I don’t know why you’d latch onto eastern Europe when I said one of the poorest areas in Europe except for your latent bigotry.

        • voight [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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          10 months ago

          I guess I’ll assume you mean this in good faith for some reason, western NGOs are pretty active in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, etc that have a lot of poverty and population loss because of uhh reasons 😶‍🌫️

          Again, I don’t really care what a social enterprise is and if it’s a halfway house, a shelter, a WeWork, or a bed-and-breakfast

          • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            western NGOs are pretty active in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, etc that have a lot of poverty and population loss because of uhh reasons

            Look, I know you want to feel like you made a correct choice when you guessed eastern europe - I’ll happily give you that it could fulfil the qualifiers I used - but the simple fact of the matter is that it’s not the only choice. There are a lot of divisions to europe, big and small, and you fucked up the 50/50 guess of east or west before you could guess a country, state/county, city, or, importantly for the area I was referring to, postcode.

            I don’t really care what a social enterprise is

            You cared a lot when you thought it was a social worker. Interesting that you don’t care now that it’s a material way to improve the lives of the poorest and most vulnerable in society, isn’t it?
            Can I take a guess that you’re fleeing your home for Vietnam because you’ve alienated everyone who might have been a potential ally by screaming that you’re smarter than them, and think that Vietnamese people will tolerate you as a “weird american” instead of thinking you’re a narcisisstic asshole too? You’ve talked about it enough it’s pretty obvious you’re just fetishing the country.

            • voight [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              just fetishing the country

              Not even British people say that, it’s fetishizing, herr doktor, try to keep it together.

              You reveal how shallow your understanding of the world is with comments like this. Hence why you can only imagine allies or work to be done in the first world. Even the idea of going to peripheral Europe affronts you, deeply.

              • ProfessorOwl_PhD [any]@hexbear.net
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                10 months ago

                I’m sorry if I offended your hyperlexical mind with my typo, we can’t all be precocious 5 year olds.

                The Vietnamese don’t even count as potential allies

                No, not for you. I’m not talking about general allies to socialist causes, I’m saying that individual human beings, wherever you live, aren’t going to want to personally work with you specifically. Whichever country you imagine life will be better in and people will finally like you, it’s not happening. You’ll still be you. Other individuals will work towards socialist goals while you… Post on twitter, and vote, apparently.

                Let me quiz you

                No.

                and trying to get other chiller (than me) people banned for not having been present for a struggle session about emotes 20,000 years ago

                You started multiple threads crying to the mods because they didn’t ban me the instant I replied to your messages - you literally sent me DM’s that were addressed to the mods on the assumption that they were reading our messages in real time. Similarly:

                YOU ARE IN A MONTHS-LONG (buckle up) ARGUMENT OVER A HEXBEAR DOT NET EMOTE

                No buddy, you keep following me around and restarting the argument on new threads while I reply to a handful of comments before clearing my messages. Can I, ONCE AGAIN, remind you how I keep having to bring up your blatant projection.

            • voight [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              FYI I already accomplished more than you in the “winning local allies” category, I have gotten a councilwoman elected to EPICLY OWN JEFF BEZOS, I have [REDACTED] until [REDACTED MAJOR GROCERY CHAIN] [REDACTED]. It doesn’t make any difference. All of my potential allies here eat out of my hand because they know if I sat down and explained to them how to do what I do, step-by-step, they couldn’t. There’s no PhD for what I do, and there never will be.

              What have you done, complained about Keir Starmer? You’re hopeless!

              I’m just not gonna raise kids in a death trap. Good luck extricating other people’s progeny from it buddy.

              • relay@lemmygrad.ml
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                10 months ago

                Why do you want people to eat out of your hand and brag about it online? I understand the virtues of obtaining difficult skills and helping your community with your skills. If someone can make some first world countries do socialist industrialization they should try and see if they are capable. If you can help Vietnam become a socialist economic superpower do it! For both socialism and your kids! Petty personal arguments don’t seem like fruitful discussions though.

            • voight [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              Let me quiz you, since you’re so eager to engage indefinitely: what are several industries which are developing faster in peripheral countries than in core countries, what differentiates core countries from peripheral countries, what is the difference between building the industrial capacity of a peripheral country and running a glorified bed-and-breakfast in the british isles? These can all guide you to understanding what work there it to be done in Vietnam, and not in the UK or the US. You have a very limited imagination.

              Again, it proves my point that when you disagree with someone on here, they are prone to disagreeing with everything you say. Talking about their job & social life & a billion presuppositions about why they don’t need to take your arguments seriously, such as: it doesn’t matter if it was already litigated, having a Fisher Price version of digitally burning the Israeli flag is more embarrassing than not having it at all. Still won’t look good in court, or in a newspaper, which is what the concern is about anyways.

            • voight [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              fleeing your home for Vietnam because you’ve alienated everyone who might have been a potential ally

              Lol, no latent bigotry about Southeast Asia here 😭😭😭 The Vietnamese don’t even count as potential allies. They’re just for the crazy bag ladies of the West!

            • voight [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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              10 months ago

              Again, all you have is insisting online interactions are a direct and proportional reflection of offline personality. Which bodes poorly for you considering:

              YOU ARE IN A MONTHS-LONG (buckle up) ARGUMENT OVER A HEXBEAR DOT NET EMOTE

              begging me to take you seriously, hell you’re about to screenshot your degree. I could get you to do it, this is how I got a white special education teacher in 'Nam to already post hand and fail to send a communist party card to me. you mfs are just too easy, make wild accusations, you bleed for the rest of your life knowing I’ve got your number