I want to start by saying that I have been involved in aid work and activism in my country for over a decade now. I have seen a lot and I think one thing that needs to be clarified is just how bad things are. Not all third-world countries are this bad, but mine is. People are living worse than animals and in absolute misery
The upper middle class tries to disconnect from this reality. They either flee to the West or isolate themselves in gated communities, but even they are still confronted with poverty. The lower classes have cheap entertainment, but they too live with delusions and fantasies. For socialists however, there is no escape. We are forced to confront this failure daily and feel powerless, knowing we cannot change anything.
Ultimately, the only conclusion we have reached is that our states desperately require centralized authority for any kind of development. Without that, we are doomed to continue living in these conditions. I am sorry but Marxist-Leninism and orthodox Marxism are not going to take hold right now. Maybe they could in the future, but at present I would describe myself simply as a socialist who wants improvement for my country and nothing else.
The only path for development in the third world is authoritarian socialism
Why is authoritarian socialism not also the solution in the first world?
>>2815497I never claimed that it wasn't the case, but I was specifically talking about the most efficient way to address the situation in the Third World.
>>2815497first world countries are either western or westernized, autocratic rule doesn't have much legitimacy in their eyes
>>2815494>authoritarianbuzzword. to wield power is to be "authoritarian."
>>2815506I disagree with that sentiment. any society can be governed by ideological leadership, as long as it meets the basic needs of the majority.
>>2815508at some point any society will want decorum and/or feeling of being involved which an authoritarian government simply cannot provide without sliding to identity politics
There is no such thing as authoritarian socialism. Authoritarianism is a spook.
top-down rule also comes with lack of responsibility before constituents which turned many well-meaning socialist ruling classes into isolated pockets of tyranny
>>2815539i totally get it but no amount of amount of autocracy is going to get you anywhere without social discipline or at least some kind of a meritocracy enforcement
>>2815543I'm realistic about my goals, at least my country should reach the level of the Uzbekistan or even Dominican Republic within my lifetime.
>muh moralism
>muh free will
>muh culture
>muh civil code
>muh cleansing fire
Consider suicide
Marxism-Leninism was historically a kind of authoritarian developmentalist dirigisme though. And they did work to industrialize dirt poor countries, Poland and Belarus for example were nearly completely blown up during WW2 but managed to climb out of poverty rather quickly
>>2815560WTF are you on about?
>>2815604I’m aware of that, but the revolution in Russia happened under extremely specific conditions, and even then it required outside help, like the Kaiser facilitating Lenin’s return and providing financial support. Later in the Eastern Bloc it took a global superpower to impose Marxist-Leninist systems across a war-ravaged Eastern Europe/
That's a bit racist
>>2815799stop being a liberal
protip: actual leftists don't use terms like "development" and "third world"
if you want to be a socialist activist so badly maybe you should start by educating yourself and cleansing your brain of capitalist/imperialist ideology and language before you start talking about what other people ought to be doing
>>2815821I am not going to use terms coined in New York academia in the 1970s by postcolonialists and out of touch diaspora.
Development leads directly to unsustainable fertility rate drops, you can either be poor or die of slow societal suicide, why is the latter better?
>>2815824>fertility ratewhite nationalist catchphrase
>>2815824Already going down, the birth rate has decreased dramatically over the span of 10 years and most of us in the third-world are nearing below-replacement levels.
I did aid work in a village in rural Sindh. Twenty years ago people had around 5–7 children, but now most families have 2 or less. Nothing materially improved, in many ways things got worse but now they have smartphones and TVs to distract themselves
>>2815831There is some basis to the idea that demographic decline could affect the economy, but 99% of the concern is pushed by corporations that are upset they can’t maintain massive exponential growth forever, even though that’s impossible. I’d say the global decline in birth rates is one of the clearest signs of late-stage capitalism
>>2815839So ban the smartphone, ban the TV and actually build the road I guess
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