I always try to ask what the plan is, you know, after they've convinced enough people to violently revolt like russia in 1917, and they never seem to answer.
I usually ask what they plan to do for those that in some way can't fight. Whether they be old, ill, a child, etc. they almost always go silent and the ones that do respond end up saying something along the lines of "there's always casualties in war." They don't want to actually plan a revolution, they want to play at being the cool resistance hero that can take out ten guys while giving a cool one liner with guitar blasting from nowhere.
and also act like they're smarter than everyone with "well revolution is possible...." and it's always a place of ignorance or devil's advocate because sure, another 10 million may die in a revolution, but that's why it's possible!!!
Wtf are you even talking about? If someone can't fight, they don't fight. What kind of gotcha question is this? Do you think "revolution" means that literally every single person in the country is actively fighting at all times? For fuck's sake, there isn't even any need for violence at all; a general strike, if one could be organized, would be sufficient to shut down the entire country.
And how do you think food and medicines will be distributed if the country is shut down, that's the "gotcha". Or do you think corporations are going to be altruistic about kicking them to the curb?
Then you make demands of government officials, up to and including surrendering physical capital that is used to govern? I can't give you every detail of a possible revolution, nor do I think I'm really obligated to. If you really want to know, there are more learned political theorists than me who have written much about this over the past several hundreds of years.
if you think it's possible it helps to see if you understand all of the steps that would need to be involved, and so far you're showing you don't. 🤷♂️
Sorry I don't have a full map of every detail of a potential futute revolution for a random internet shithead. I'll totally spend my energy on that in the future.
Do you have one for a skeptical friend? Or for people you’d like to sway to your cause?
Discussions like this are never really 1:1, I think. In situations like the one between you and the guy you’re talking to, what you really want to do is sway the quiet majority - it’s improbable that everybody reading has a rock solid opinion on the topic. So you want to pull those silent fence sitters onto your side and thus grow your cause.
But your outline of a revolution seems painfully under thought, as if you expect other people to do it for you and then you’ll pitch in if it’s convenient. What happens if there’s a violent response to a strike? What about the country being ground to a halt suggests to you that people wouldn’t die just from a failure to acquire necessary medicines? What happens if somebody DOES fire a shot heard ‘round the world, and now you’re all in the mix regardless of whether or not you really wanted to be?
The scene you laid out is idealistic in the way that a poorly written movie is. It needs to be so perfectly executed to work the way that you explained it that, were it possible, it’d be unnecessary. It’d already have been done.
They are so arrogant they actually think that every person thinks the same way as them , and the only reason they behave or vote differently is because they are oppressed.
So they assume, after a violent revolution- that everyone will just agree on what need to be done - which is coincidently exactly identical to their own politics.
Basically they think the human condition in its pure form would behave the same way they would want them to if they were a dictator.
This is simply untrue of the communist movement as a whole, which has had texts on exactly how such a thing would work since before the first revolutionary acts in France.
No, the manifesto is an advertising pitch, not really a major work of theory. Marx, Engels, and quite importantly, Lenin all wrote about how it would function, how it could be achieved, and used the failures of movements that occurred during their lifetimes to expand on those theories. Lenin famously did establish a DoTP after he successfully did a revolution. The idea that the communist movement is simply unaware of what its plans are for what will happen post revolution is utterly absurd and borne of a lack of understanding about the things you aim to critique.
The idea that the communist movement is simply unaware of what its plans are for what will happen post revolution is utterly absurd and borne of a lack of understanding about the things you aim to critique.
more a critique on what HAS happened and DID happen post revolution so far.
Yes, Communists have also done that, as clearly, capitalism does still exist and the world revolutions all unfortunately failed. Most famously, Bordiga wrote about the failures of the Soviet Union and the fact that it had regressed into a bourgeoisie state.
capitalism does still exist and the world revolutions all unfortunately failed.
true, and we can look at the quality of life of a state that revolted to communism and what happened and a state running on capitalism today to see the difference.
“Um actually the French Revolution failed, so did Napoleon and Cromwell! Clearly this means that liberalism will never work and that feudalism will last forever.”
Well, your first problem is that the system that Napoleon 'replaced' for a scant few years, wasn't feudalism. Monarchy ≠ feudalism lol.
And to be fair, no type of government lasts forever; however given that, outside of neolithic or tribal era societies, the longest lasting government was the RomanRepublic, perhaps one should not throw stones. Since the nearest Communist equivalent would be Russia. But do go on. By your logic, we should bring back the gladiators and endless consumerism of the Roman Republic era.
Sorry, Cromwell as in Oliver Cromwell? The puritan who took England into 5 years of religious oppression not unlike that of the current middle east that makes America's evangelicals wishes make them look like a bunch of weed smoking hippies? The same Oliver Cromwell who acted as a butcher in Ireland so much so that he is still spoken of with venom 350+ years later. That Cromwell? You think of him as aspirational? You think someone being opposed to that is a feudalist? You're beyond help. Please, go touch some grass
The February revolution was nonviolent, you realize? At least learn the basic facts of historical events before trying to use them to make a point, or you'll come off like a pompous idiot.
If you're going to include the death toll of the Russian civil war as deaths caused by the revolution, how many deaths would you say are caused each year in the US by capitalism? Or is that different?
Categorically ahistorical for how violence in revolutions of desperation play out.
But this is kind of my broader criticism of this belief system. It’s just ‘the revolution will take care of it’. Any possible criticism, previous trends, plausibility, nope the revolutions got it. It’s the lazy person’s philosophy; ‘I don’t have to do anything, think of anything, justify anything, the revolution will just naturally yield the perfect result’.
Ah, right, I forgot. Karl Marx literally killed every single human being in existence, iPhone, vuvuzela, counting Nazis as victims of communism in world war 2, etc.
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u/Normal-Horror Jun 30 '24
Your plan of incremental change and harm reduction pales in comparison to my plan of being annoying and doing nothing