What is conscription? A "fun" way to waste a year of your life doing unpaid labor in some camp. Oh, sorry, it's not "unpaid", the wage is 8 euros.

"What's the big deal?" you say. "8 euros sounds decent for a guaranteed job for 1 year in a place with very low living costs compared to the US. That's about the minimum wage here". And that would be true, if it was 8 euros per hour. Except it is 8 euros PER MONTH. It's almost a joke, like I have no clue what you're supposed to do with 8 euros. But I guess they give you shitty food and a shitty bunker bed to sleep? Awesome. Oh wait they're now saying they're gonna increase the wage to 30 euros. Impressive. Except they're probably doing it because they want to make conscription last longer than a year, whoo!!

Basically it's a great place where a bunch of weirdos with anger issues scream at you while you're mopping floors and you just have to ignore them every day for a year, if you don't have anything left to do in there you can leave for a while but you have to be back by midnight, and you can only take leaves for a total of 18 days throughout the whole year. Dumbasses tend to become fashy in there too. What an amazing institution, I'm so fucking happy the state doesn't want to pay people to work in camps so they just have us do it for free. It's really wild how much you can get away with if you promote it as patriotic.

  • Pezevenk [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    The argument that you can’t have a conscript army because fascist states have used it is a bit of a shit argument

    That's not what I said.

    A fascist state at the height of its power got a near haegemonic control of culture where the military is used as a instrument of thought control

    Yes, that's the military in general.

    This is not som”weird argument”,

    Yes it is. The only leftists I've seen saying this kind of weird nonsense is confused online people, usually from countries which don't even have conscription.

    The same can be argued for the Vietnam war where desertion and discontent in the ranks (see “fragging”) arguably helped shorten the war.

    Yeah I'm sure the US military really got owned that they had tons of additional soldiers because a few of them deserted. That's why they drafted people, to sabotage their own war.

    The military is just another arena in the struggle for political power. And in the same way that it is important for socialists to be present in workplaces, schools and the streets. It’s is important to have a presence in the military. This is much easier in a conscript army. There are of course reasonable arguments one could levy against a conscript system, but if you live in a country that’s not currently at, or is at the risk of going to war and your primary argument against conscription is that you are “at the prime of your life”and don’t want to do it because you don’t like the thought of the state forcing you to, instead of viewing army training as a opportunity to pick up some skills and experiences that might just be useful if push really comes to shove one day, then I would say that you are missing some of the bigger picture of what we as socialist are trying to do, and dare I say it… being a bit of a lib

    Dude you clearly have no clue what mandatory service is like so please don't say nonsense about it. You know there's still a professional army right? You know that it's solely professionals who have any kind of influence in the army and not random conscripts who will be gone in a year, right? The idea that you can somehow influence the military from beneath via conscription is just stupid. Turkey has conscription too. Btw Turkey is fighting a bunch of wars. Do you think they're sending the conscripts? No, they're mostly sending a bunch of Syrian mercenaries and the conscripts can't do shit about it. The conscripts don't even have to be armed if the military doesn't want them to be at some specific time. I'm so done with this galaxy brain nonsense, "uhhh what if doing unpaid labor for this highly nationalistic and extremely reactionary instrument that forces young people into its ranks so that a bunch of nazis and divorced weirdos can shout at them and teach them "discipline" is good akshually? YOU LEARN VALUABLE SKILLS FOR THE REVOLUTION MOPPING THE FLOORS, STOP BEING A LIB!". Ugh.

    • Antites [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I am from a nation that have conscription. I don’t know what military service entails in your country, but here it’s not simply mopping floors and getting yelled at. I went to conscription as an 18 year old and was denied service due to my leftists and antifascist political activism. I was a bit of a shit then and was happy about it but i have comrades who tried hard to get in to more specialized arms of the service and was sussed out by the Security service. One close friend was denied training with the engineering corps on the day he was supposed to report for duty. The state knows the danger of socialists in the military, one would expect you as a socialist to do the same.

      The US was forced to use conscription to fight the kind of war they wanted to fight in Vietnam, but that opened them up for the kind of influence that I’m talking about. I think you would be hard pressed to find an historian that would deny that the pressure and dissatisfaction from the draftees wasn’t an important part in ending the Vietnam war. As I tried to explain in my previous post; conscription is not a garantee against state control, but it is an opening to oppose and challenge it, and giving it up seems like a really poor move for a movement that someday aims to replace it with the rule of the people.

      • Pezevenk [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        I am from a nation that have conscription. I went to conscription as an 18 year old and was denied service due to my leftists and antifascist political activism. I was a bit of a shit then and was happy about it but i have comrades who tried hard to get in to more specialized arms of the service and was sussed out by the Security service. One close friend was denied training with the engineering corps on the day he was supposed to report for duty. The state knows the danger of socialists in the military, one would expect you as a socialist to do the same.

        Lmao so you literally know that the state will simply ban you from the military if push comes to shove, why the fuck are you even making that argument then.

        • Antites [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          I got lot of friend that made their military service and are committed socialist today. They don’t regret the few years the spent in the woods learning to shoot.

          I’m engaging with you, giving you historical and personal examples and trying to argue this thing in somewhat good faith. Maybe try to do the same?

          • Pezevenk [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I don't really care much about arguing "in good faith" about discussing the benefits of unpaid labor for hypernationalistic chud factories from a """leftist""" perspective, especially with a person who apparently thinks it is "liberalism" to criticize it. I'm gonna show this to people here btw, it's pretty funny.

            • Antites [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Please do. Just make sure to show your weak ass arguments about not wanting to mop floors and getting screamed at too. Oh and re-read those arguments after you spent a decade or so working for a living in this garbage system of ours, and you’ll see how fucking hollow ”someone forced me to do something against my will and yelled at me” rings.

              • Pezevenk [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Just make sure to show your weak ass arguments about not wanting to mop floors and getting screamed at too.

                Literally no one wants to do that.

                Oh and re-read those arguments after you spent a decade or so working for a living in this garbage system of ours,

                YOU LITERALLY GET PAID TO WORK. YOU LITERALLY DON'T GET PAID TO WORK IN THE ARMY. And you can at least, you know, leave after 8 hours, and live in your own house.

                Dude stop being so embarrassing, please lol

                "Wow imagine not wanting to do forced unpaid labor for nationalists whose entire purpose is trying to 'break' people into discipline, what a weak ass argument. Yeah, I'm totally a socialist."

                • Antites [none/use name]
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  What do you mean? conscript armies do pay their soldiers. It’s certainly the norm where I live. And if you think you will “break” from doing military service for a year or two and come out a fucking SS-goon or something on the other side, then I don’t know what to tell you, maybe your not really built for this world.

                  • Pezevenk [he/him]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    What do you mean? conscript armies do pay their soldiers.

                    Did you even read the post?

                    And if you think you will “break” from doing military service for a year or two and come out a fucking SS-goon or something on the other side, then I don’t know what to tell you, maybe your not really built for this world.

                    It doesn't matter if I or anyone else in specific does so. It is their job description. And it does work on many 18 year olds.