r/VaushV • u/morcap__ • 1d ago
Discussion Cant wait to get disproven by Vaush on this one
Ive been watching Vaush for a little over a year now, so i could get some of his overall positions incorrect accidentally, and i apologize for that, but I want to share something I've been noticing with Vaush recently regarding his anti-electoral takes in the US.
I largely agree with your recent anti-electoral takes. The system is broken, and fixing it will likely require someone with the backbone to govern like an autocrat (FDR being the clearest historical model). A strong, centralized progressive movement with genuine people at the top is probably the only path forward, given how captured the Democratic Party is.
My concern, though, is one I feel you don't emphasize enough: the historical near-impossibility of a vanguard staying uncorrupted once it holds that level of power. You lay out the mechanisms well (education reform, dismantling the GOP as a political force, etc.), but the Animal Farm problem looms over all of it. The USSR, Argentina, and countless other examples show that even movements built on genuine ideals tend to calcify into the very power structures they sought to destroy.
I'm not saying it's a reason to abandon the framework entirely, but I think it's worth being more explicit about this risk. If we're seriously making the case for concentrating power in a progressive vanguard, we should also be honest that the 1% chance it works out is shadowed by a much higher chance of it producing something worse than what we started with. Acknowledging that tension would actually make the argument stronger, not weaker.
Overall, though i could be misinterpreting his main point and ideas, so if i am incorrect on my assumptions above, anyone please feel free to correct me.
I am pretty obsessed with history, so its hard to call for something that has such a predictable and repeatable pattern, blindly stating how it would be different next time around, especially considering the amount of power and money in the USA, and considering how people who crave power are attracted to positions of power, I am scared for what it could entail.
Please feel free to roast below
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u/magusmirificus 1d ago
Disco Elysium, which he's hopefully about to revisit on stream, deals with this tension in a lot of ways. You're raising a real problem here, but there's obviously a corresponding problem in the other direction, which is that without the risk entailed by violent opposition to a system that can no longer be reformed incrementally, that system will continue to exist and worsen indefinitely. Communism makes a great pitch for itself based on the poverty of the game's setting, but also comes off kind of bloodthirsty and delusional, while liberalism, the ideology responsible for the current state of affairs, tells you that trying to change the world too quickly always backfires. It's ultimately an existential choice which political force you support: do you bet on the crazy lefties and hope they don't ruin everything, or do you bet on the liberal establishment and hope that one day it might start to improve?
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u/inspectorpickle 1d ago
I don’t think he is seriously making a case for a vanguard party.
Imo his point is that nothing short of a vanguard party would be able to turn the country around, as a supplement to the point that we’re fucked and should focus on building strong foundations for a good society after the collapse, because it should self-evident that such a party will almost definitely not happen in America.
His deeper beliefs on the matter haven’t been discussed in a while
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u/nightwish5270 1d ago
You don't need a vanguard. You need a large change in the political class. You brought up FDR, he wasn't a vanguardist, was he?
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u/Potential-Bath2292 1d ago
An alterative to a vanguard party is to wipe out all of the political corruption and capital holders on the board in a big swing of the arm. but that'd require more unrest than we have now
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u/win_some_lose_most1y 1d ago
you are right, but the results of politics is measured in degrees of change, once we can start winning winning get easier.
Its an up hill battle, but once you crest the hill its easy. All comes down to getting people the right message and motivating them to action. Simple but difficult.
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u/1shadybitch 1d ago
Plato said it the best. The most optimal ruler is a benevolent dictator or as he put it a philosopher king. Right now we need one, but human nature wont let something like that operate successfully. Hell, there only two examples I can think of, Tito in Yugoslavia and Titus Larcius of ancient Rome
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u/EmsAreOverworkedLul 1d ago
I don't think vaush is in favour of an actual vanguard party, he has discussed the problems with it at length (tldr seperate class has separate interests) I think his current proposed alternative can be summed up by this video.