this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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Oh, that clears it up, I see now liquidating the right sort of people "who deserve it" is a far-left thing that is righteous, and liquidating the wrong people who, as the right say """""deserve it"""" is a far-right thing that is evil.
Before I read this, I was a stupid centrist who thought you shouldn't liquidate groups of people at all, thank you for showing me the right way
Man that guy really went all out to assist you in making your point didn't he?
If his point is that the people of the world should roll over and let the rulling class continue to rule over them and never fight back, then all he has pointed out his complacency.
Is it possible that there is a better a solution to the issues of Capitalism which doesn't involve the liquidation of entire groups of people?
Being a person who have visited communist meetings, this is my biggest gripe with the ideology. Yes, capitalism today has become corrupted, perhaps even beyond repair. But, I refuse to believe that the only solution is to round up and kill the capitalist bosses in order to bring back power to the working class. At this point, we would be dehumanizing an entire group of people which wouldn't make us much better than what the far-right does.
I believe you've misunderstood what "eliminating a social class" means, and the history of socialism.
Eliminating a social class doesn't mean murdering everyone who belongs to it, it means eliminating the position they hold in society. If you take all capitalists, and take all of their means of production and redistribute them among the workers, you've eliminated the capitalists as a class, without the need to exterminate the individuals.
An example would be dekulakization in the USSR. Rich peasants, or kulaks, who owned lands and employed other peasants to work their lands, were subjected to forced collectivisation of their lands, between the late 1920s and throughout 1930s. This was promoted by the soviet authorities, but mostly enacted by peasants themselves who denounced kulaks for expropriation. The policy was so popular and poor peasants had such desire to expropriate the kulaks, that the central authorities had to enforce limits on percentage of people denounced as kulaks in a given territory, because it was too much. But the penalty to kulaks was rarely ever execution, it was expropriation itself, and in more extreme cases, exile to other parts of the USSR. Dekulakization took place without the murder of all kulaks, although it was a very chaotic, inefficient, and rather violent process. Of course, Marxist-Leninists are interested in the mistakes of the past, and on how we'd enforce this policy in a more efficient, less violent way. That's why we're interested in Marxist history and communist countries, and the reasons why policies were applied a given way, instead of superficial analysis of "X person was bad and that's why things were bad".
This is a fair point, but a general premise to Marxism is a bloody revolution where the working class takes the assets from capitalist bosses. Perhaps some Marxist are interested in alternative methods, but the group of communist members with which I was able to discuss this topic with were not concerned with that.
They demonized and dehumanized capitalist and talked about them as if they were not worth saving, and it was this kind of rhetoric that turned me off from their cause.
Though, it was also their rhetoric which presumed racism and sexism would be solved if we all just view eachother as workers. This seemed to underplay the effects these caste systems have on people.
I personally don't know what collective you've been engaged with, but I can tell you in my experience Marxists take racism and feminism very seriously, and that while revolution is a necessary step for the emancipation of the oppressed, it's by no means the only one since we have a lot of biases and behaviours ingrained in our cultures and societies.
A general premise of Marxism isn't necessarily a bloody revolution, it's just that the owners of the means of production normally won't just give those away to the workers without resorting to violence. In the USSR, there was a civil war started by the tsarist supporters. In Cuba, there was a war first against the Spanish, then against the American and Batista. In my home country, Spain, progressive policy during the democratic Spanish Second Republic was trumped by a fascist coup that plunged the country into authoritarianism for 40 years. In Chile, reformist Salvador Allende was also toppled and murdered by a fascist coup (CIA-backed). Mosaddegh in Iran was also deposed by capitalists. I could go on and on listing examples but I think my point is clear.
I don't know of any revolution (by revolution, I mean a change in the class-structure of a system) which has succeeded without the former ruling class exerted violence to keep their power. It's not that revolutionary Marxists want violence, it's just that historically, there doesn't seem to be a possibility of emancipation for the working classes without having to respond to violence from the ruling class.
And again, historical examples show how, generally, once these revolutions triumph, they're not as oppressive and violent against individuals formerly in power as the term "extermination of the capitalist class" suggests. I already showed you with Kulaks how they weren't murdered en-masse, simply expropriated and at worse forcibly relocated. Another example would be the last emperor of China, who wasn't murdered, but instead was forced into prison for rehabilitation and reeducation for 10 years, came out of prison openly saying that he regretted his actions as emperor, and went on to become an influential person within the institutions of the new China.
I was engaging with a collective in the US, and they seemed to be wishing for a global revolution; so excommunication would not be an option like the Kulaks unless the idea is to remove them from Earth.
I guess I can't judge all collectives when I only engaged with one (go figure, right). I appreciate you taking the time to share information with me. It was enlightening.
All good mate, thanks the discussion!
Liquidation of assests
So you believe that there's something like a group of people that will always be striving to be these capitalist overlords and that there's no one in the rest of the population that would display that corrupt desire for power? Either this stinks of eugenics or you're simply naive. Firstly what does it help us killing that group, when the system doesn't change? Secondly if both change, the system needs to be so that people striving to corrupt power will not be able to achieve that power. I've yet to see a system that managed that. The soviet union for one certainly didn't. In fact that is a playbook example of how not to do it, right besides the first french revolution. If you believe that by killing the "corrupt overlords" you won't be getting any more corrupt people striving for power, we're once again at the point is this eugenics or are you naive.
If you think there hasn't been an example of an alternative system of putting people in charge of a government, then you're simply ignorant. Here's one example for you to chew on:
The driving force of change in Cuba's system are local organizations. There's the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, which operate on a neighborhood level, major workplaces and townships also form coherent political blocs, and the people who arise as leaders of the system are just community and workplace leaders who were elected into the system. There are no political parties, no big donors, and no entrenched power structure that vets candidates - its the most a government has ever been made up of regular people, and it's communists who set it up.
Yes and that state only still exists because the lend-lease their doctors to the entire world and make the high-priced rum and cigars.
I see, your problem is that you think I'm advocating for new violence. What I'm advocating for is the violence of self defense. Capitalists do far worse things to far more people every day on order to maintain their power than would be required by the working class to remove them.
The good ol whataboutism here again I see...
It's not a whataboutism, it's a clarification. If you think that violence to maintain an oppressive structure and violence to overthrow that structure are morally equal, then you are a coward hiding behind pacifism in order to endorse keeping the current status quo.