Socialism Without Anti-Imperialism: A Different Flavor of Tyranny — Comrade Hermit (Nicky Reid)

"Libertarian socialism."

The reality is, if you really break it down, socialism is just some system of governance which affords some form of social ownership over the means of production. Democrats and Republicans alike have almost always supported some variant of socialist policy when it suits them. I myself follow a decidedly purist strain of this philosophy often referred to as libertarian socialism.

While in the past I've danced with the devil of full-tilt Bolshevism and I continue to stubbornly defend the legacy of Third World state socialists like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, I've come to the hard fought conclusion that the only way for truly empowered social ownership of basic human rights like healthcare and education to exist is for it to be wholly decentralized, voluntary and operated from the bottom up. The idea of Bernie's Medicare for All just sounds like swapping masters to me, from corporate bag munchers to federal bag munchers. I'm already experiencing Medicare for Some as a legally disabled agoraphobic and let me tell you, there is exactly nothing empowering about it. I feel like shit being barely strung along by the very same folks who brought us Waco, Ludlow and My Lai, and that brings me to the biggest bug I have up my ass about millennial socialism....

Exile in Happy Valley
Socialism Without Anti-Imperialism: A Different Flavor of Tyranny
Comrade Hermit (Nicky Reid)

Noam Chomsky —Lecture from 1970

I think it is useful to setup as a framework for discussion four somewhat idealized positions with regard to the role of the state in an advanced industrial society. I want to call these positions 1) classical liberal, 2) libertarian socialist, 3) state socialist, 4) state capitalist and I want to consider each in turn. [00:43]

Also, I'd like to make clear my own point in advance, so that you can evaluate and judge what I am saying. I think that the libertarian socialist concepts, and by that I mean a range of thinking that extends from left-wing Marxism through anarchism, I think that these are fundamentally correct and that they are the proper and natural extension of classical liberalism into the era of advanced industrial society. In contrast, it seems to me that the ideology of state socialism, that is, what has become of Bolshevism, and of state capitalism, the modern welfare state, these of course are dominant in the industrial countries, in the industrial societies, but I believe that they are regressive and highly inadequate social theories, and that a large number of our really fundamental problems stem from a kind of incompatibility and inappropriateness of these social forms to a modern industrial society. [01:39]

Well then let me consider these four points of reference in sequence, beginning with the classical liberal point of view.

Noam Chomsky lecture from 1970 (!) -- full text transcript and link to audio lecture
(h/t JK in the comments)