The US may collect as much or more information as China but their enforcement actions taken based on this information are far far more limited.

Authoritarians everywhere: “You need my boot on your neck, because the other guy’s boot will be even worse!”

Thank goodness that would never happen in the enlightened, democratic West.

There is some truth to this but it overlooks the fact that the Bolsheviks were distinct from other socialist parties from the very beginning by their top-down, authoritarian party structure, with Lenin in control. As soon as they gained power, they immediately worked to impose this type of management on the entirety of Russian society by crushing first the Duma, then the Soviets, and finally eliminating any autonomy exercised by their own supporters, the labor unions. They also immediately began engaging in electoral chicanery and postponing or rigging elections in their favor. By destroying or subsuming every other institution in society, the party structure became the primary structure of governance, and Russia became a totalitarian state. Most of this took place even before the civil war and was arguably a major contributor to it.

So why did Russia become a dictatorship? Because the Bolsheviks decided it was desirable based on their understanding and development of socialist theory, and other forces failed to stop them for various reasons. It’s pretty much that simple. The civil war and foreign pressures probably strengthened this tendency but I don’t believe it was the primary cause.

And of course, almost every other socialist revolution since that time was inspired by the Bolsheviks since they “succeeded”. So they largely sought to impose dictatorships as well.

Ultimately it all goes back to Marx and his idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is one of the crucial flaws of Marxism in my view.

I feel strongly that home vegetable gardening is a solarpunk activity. Gaining the skills to produce food outside of corporate or state control is great as is.

If you want to make it even more solarpunk then participate in a mutual aid network, which can be a formal organization but could also just be sharing excess food with friends or community members, just as someone did for OP.

Edit: I want to elaborate on why this is so important. The primary way the powerful in society control us is through their control over essential resources required for survival. If the community can provide for our needs then there is no longer a need to participate in capitalism or the state. So every resource our communities can muster improves our bargaining power against them.

The issue there is that admins are also overworked volunteers, so they have little incentive to step in an anger their mods who they depend on to manage local communities.

I’m not saying anyone involved here is a bad person, just that the system as it currently works creates bad outcomes. I’m not totally sure what would be better but I’d like to see more experimentation on this topic.

!pleasantpolitics@slrpnk.net has a limited form of automated moderation. I don’t think this particular method will solve the problem but I’d like to see more similar experiments.

I looked at the modlog and while OP seems snarky, sarcastic, and opinionated, their bans seem pretty unnecessary by my standards. The stated reasons seem fairly dubious, more mod finds your opinion disagreeable than any rule-breaking.

Moderation on Lemmy is a shit show honestly.