The whole issue is this kind of pigeonholing and purity testing. My most controversial conjecture is first that political science isn't a static thing, and that so much of "the left" seems more interested in relitigating the cold war and "eat the rich" fan service than actually engaging in pragmatic policy debates. This is why i much prefer to discuss politics in terms of first principles instead of labels, and for whatever reason, this rubs a lot of leftists the wrong way.

I believe that individual liberty is essential to democratic agency, and that democratic agency is critical to the administration of a just state. Any socialist state must rest on this foundation and not route through autocracy. You will find that I am very focused on the human side of socialist praxis - what are so many people skeptical of these ideals? What does modern socialism actually look like in practice, and how do modern socialists win support of a relatively comfortable middle class? I see social justice as a key aspect of this, as it tears down social structures which marginalize and exclude. This is also why I balk at some of the more obnoxious "class warfare" rhetoric on Lemmy in particular, because it serves to divide and exclude, not unite and elevate.

I am very skeptical of overly utopian visions, and liturgical populism, as these are historically distractions which serve to divide workers the same way culture wars do. I actually believe that these are some of the primary roadblocks to the above questions, and the rhetoric in online leftist spaces is often extremely counterproductive in this way.

I would describe myself as something like a democratic socialist, leaning more towards the libertarian/syndicalist side of the spectrum, but again - I tend to see such labels as uselessly modernist. I think material scarcity is a primary driver of economic injustice, and a big part my ideology revolves around substituting capitalism's role in resolving scarcity with more egalitarian economic structures. Rather than setting the world in fire, this starts with some basic things like mandating worker shares and worker councils for all industries. In general, the idea is to extend and scale the whole "means of production" to a more generalized labor landscape where we aren't just dealing with factories and machines, via wholesale democratization of the workplace.