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Revolution and the Supreme Being
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Message 1.Â
Posted by dlhalliday (U14188084) on Sunday, 25th October 2009
I saw the Â鶹ԼÅÄ 2 program "Terror! Robespierre and the revolution". I thought it was an execellent program and enjoyed the debate over the nature, causes and aims of the 'Terror'.
I thought the argument of justification (e.g. 'war without war', 'revolution without terror') a persuasive one in purely philosophical terms. However my point is that; who is purely 'virtuous'? Ultimatley all revolution betrays the pure ideal because human beings cannot meet the ideal of the 'supreme being'. Thus the logic is that everyone is eventually a counter revolutionary (e.g. Danton, Bukharin, Trotsky, Stalin...). Then all revolution gets corrupted and the danger is the terror becomes a tool of oppression and not a means to create a new 'virtuous society'.
In the end human beings cannot live up to this abstract ideal. One may argue that 'liberal democracy' and pluralism is not perfect, but it is the only system developed that will safeguard society from corrupted tyranny. -
Message 2
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Monday, 26th October 2009
If that's the programme I saw as well, I thought Simon Schama in particular made some very interesting points about Robespierre's use of terror to control the country....
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Message 3
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 27th October 2009
And a documentary which managed to include the vital historical context of a Republican France beseiged by the massed Imperial powers of Europe.
Revolutions which are left alone are perfectly capable of progressing without paranoia.
But when did that ever happen? -
Message 4
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Tuesday, 27th October 2009
Revolutions which are left alone are perfectly capable of progressing without paranoia. Not according to Marx's Communist Manifesto. I presume you mean that paranoia stands for or results in violence.
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Message 5
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Friday, 30th October 2009
The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.
- Joseph ConradÂ
True of most revolutions, I think, especially the Frenchh and Russian ones. The only probable exception might be the American Revolution. -
Message 6
Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Saturday, 31st October 2009
Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:18 GMT, in reply to Allan D in message 5
I know there are some who would doubt the "noble" and "unselfish" character of some of the fathers of the American Revolution! There's also the question of how far the ideals of liberty and equality held by the rebels extended to slaves and Native Americans. -
Message 7
Posted by baz (U14168465) on Saturday, 31st October 2009
Apart from the Americans, most revolutionary leaders seem to behave in a god-like manner: Lenin, Stalin,Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mussolini,etc, etc.
Kim Jong Il is almost a living god, and his dead father is also deemed to be part of the politbureau , I believe. The Che cult is a typical case of the deification of a thuggish nonentity; and Castro's name is spoken of reverently, even on Newsnight Review! -
Message 8
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 15th December 2009
posted by suvorovetz
Revolutions which are left alone are perfectly capable of progressing without paranoia.
Quoted from this message
Not according to Marx's Communist Manifesto. I presume you mean that paranoia stands for or results in violence. </quote>
Where does the Communist Manifesto state that paranoia is a requirement of a socialist society?
Paranoia means paranoia - thye belief that you are being persecuted, which in the case of France in 1789 and Russia in 1917 was quite true.
In the C19th it was obvious that power would not be surrendered to any equitable political system without a fight, no matter how many elections were held and won by the people. The examples are almost too common to list. Just think Franco.
Since 1864, history has shown that no attempt at an equitable society has been allowed by the vested interests of the markets. Not even the humble NHS.
The attempts to suppress Republican France by the massed feudal empires of Europe were bound to result in domestic oppression, it's what they were designed to do. -
Message 9
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 15th December 2009
<quote>Message posted by baz
Apart from the Americans, most revolutionary leaders seem to behave in a god-like manner: Lenin, Stalin,Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Mussolini,etc, etc.
Kim Jong Il is almost a living god, and his dead father is also deemed to be part of the politbureau , I believe. <quote>
No socialist revolutionaries there. Feudal warlords all, with no progression from a compatible preceding state.
Stalin was an apprentice priest and junior gangster in a Monolithic feudal empire. The same in essence for all Eastern and Catholic dictators (ou missed our Franco, Pinochet and all the other inconveniently numerous fascist Latin American demi-gods.). Hitler was the prime example of a dictator created by capitalism. So that leaves no socialist leaders for you to defame.
Castro was a puppet of the Soviets because without them America would have destroyed the achievements of the people ands returned Cuba to the feudal gangster status it enjoyed under its pre-Castro dictatorship.
Without interference from outside, Cuba would have chugged along nicley enough on its cigar sales. After all, Seychelles, which has a similar regime, manages well enough on fewer natural resources. It just doesn't have a great school Bully breathing down its neck threatening to duff it up every five minutes.
But then, it doesn't sit a t the gateway to the Mexican Gulf and is not in a position to control oil-tanker traffic. -
Message 10
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Tuesday, 15th December 2009
Where does the Communist Manifesto state that paranoia is a requirement of a socialist society?
Paranoia means paranoia - thye belief that you are being persecuted, which in the case of France in 1789 and Russia in 1917 was quite true. The issue is not paranoia per se; it's the violence and compulsion. As another statist here admitted, the key condition for a statist revolution to succeed is a crisis - whether real or perceived or invented. So, if the said paranoia is not real, it is instilled. That's because people by and large are too smart to give up their property and liberty for the promised utopia, unless of course they are somehow coerced into doing so. -
Message 11
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 15th December 2009
The only violence which is convenient to your argument, you mean.
Are you saying that the violence of the Storming of the Bastille was wrong while the violence which built it was right?
How strange, given that the violence which created it was to defend an absolute ruler, while the violence which destroyed it liberated millions form thjat tyranny. Unless of course you believe that no tyranny deserves to be overthrown by violence and that the ordinary people never have the right to defend themselves, which makes you the ultimate pacifist, and deserving of the sharpest peak in the Himalayas to sit and contemplate on.
The issue is entirely about the paranoia created in Republican France by the massed armies and secret services of the British, Prussian, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. A model which was to be repeated later in 1917 and which eventually made Stalin the man of the moment. -
Message 12
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Tuesday, 15th December 2009
Are you saying that the violence of the Storming of the Bastille was wrong while the violence which built it was right? I thought you were talking about the Communist Manifesto. So, what tyranny was it supposed to liberate the said millions of people from? Oh, I get it. They actually WERE liberated from their property, their liberty and their life in many cases by that wonderful idea.
A model which was to be repeated later in 1917 and which eventually made Stalin the man of the moment It is not clear what exactly you are referring to. But unfortunately, except for the internal opposition in Russia (which Bolsheviks surpressed with the unseen brutality) nobody threatened the Bolshevik regime. Quite the opposite, Woodraw Wilson not only refused Western diplomats' requests to reinforce a token force at Arkhangelsk, he refused to undermine Lenin's regime economically - which was very easy to do. After Versailles, the only force capable of stopping Red Army's aggression in Europe was former Lenin's fellow Social Democrat Pilsudski's Polish troops - as they did at Warsaw in 1920. It was Bolsheviks who helped Germany to rearm in violation of Versailles. Which was exactly part of the home-made crisis and/or paranoia the Bolsheviks always needed to maintain and/or expand the regime. -
Message 13
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 15th December 2009
You were making unsupported claims about the Communist manifesto, and making gross confusions between 'paranoia' and violence', when you've cleared up the difference in your own mind, you can make your case again, and this time without the pacifist fundamentalism.
So where does it state in the Communist Manifesto that paranoia is necessary to socialism?
Violence was certainly as necessary to regime-change in the C19th as it is now. But once achieved, the overthrow of a tyrrany requires only that the people be left to consolidate their gains, which did not happen after 1789 or 1917, when there was enough interference to trigger a civil war, which you fail to remember.
I see though without being told that you do not feel that the rule of an absolute ruler is iniquitous in any way. So what have you got against Stalin?
All socialists hate him as their political opposite, he sounds like your kind of guy entirely, being just another Czar as he was.
Likewise MaoDzeDong, who merely carried on the autocratic Confucian dynastic system after a lull inspired by the british Empire. -
Message 14
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Tuesday, 15th December 2009
You were making unsupported claims about the Communist manifesto, and making gross confusions between 'paranoia' and violence', when you've cleared up the difference in your own mind, you can make your case again, and this time without the pacifist fundamentalism. What? Talk about clearing up some minds here. Try again.
So where does it state in the Communist Manifesto that paranoia is necessary to socialism? Paranoia is entirely your introduction into this topic. Communist Manifesto calls for world war - no less and no more. It does unequivocally and unapologetically.
But once achieved, the overthrow of a tyrrany requires only that the people be left to consolidate their gains, which did not happen after 1789 or 1917, when there was enough interference to trigger a civil war, which you fail to remember. Let's take 1917. What tyranny have the Bolsheviks violently overthrown? The Democratically elected Duma and Provisional Government comprised of socialists and constitutional democrats? And what interference exactly are you talking about? Perhaps, German's Reichswer's funds and logistics used to facilitate Lenin's dash to power?
I see though without being told that you do not feel that the rule of an absolute ruler is iniquitous in any way. So what have you got against Stalin? All socialists hate him as their political opposite, he sounds like your kind of guy entirely, being just another Czar as he was. Oh, no. Stalin is entirely your guy. He's not the guy who "subverted" the revolution. He was the guy following Marxist theory almost to the last "t", except he probably was a milder and saner individual than maestro Marx himself, given what I know about the... let's just call him an individual. -
Message 15
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Friday, 18th December 2009
Where to begin to right this catalogue of folly.
Communbism calls for class war. Every other bungle you make stems from that deliberate distoirtion.
Find one socialist who admires Stalin. Stalin's own hero, Ivan the terrible, was a feudal ruler. Stalin was following in his steps, (and in the steps of the much-cosmetised Czar Nicholas.)
Stalin's regime had as little to do with socialism as the Spanish Inquisition relfected the vlaues of the Sermon on the Mount.
Paranoia is central to this topic. The French Republic was immediately threatened on all sides by the eurpoean Imperial feudal powers. The result was, as the progranmme illustrated, the terror.
1917, same thing. The paranoia of western capitalism faced with a nation of workers seizing power created both the Civil war, with devastating consequences, and during which Stalin was somewhere probably doing something brave, and allowed a blind eye to be turned to Naziism, even though every educated person knew it would lead to further disaster.
Your admiration for feudal power makes Stalin your boy, socialism is not feudalism.
Your education should start somewhere.
Now where does the Communist manifesto propose paranoia? -
Message 16
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Friday, 18th December 2009
Communbism calls for class war. Every other bungle you make stems from that deliberate distoirtion. You can call mass murder of people on a global scale any way you like it - it is still the mass murder of people on a global scale.
Find one socialist who admires Stalin. Actually, statists - many of whom call themselves socialists - have overtly admired, supported and defended Bolsheviks, Stalin included, for decades. I'm sure, you are a admirer of such people as Bernard Show and Herbert Wells, people who knowingly and consciously ignored mass atrocities committed by Bolshevik regime - for the cause, of course. Same goes for the infamous and powerful New York Times, particularly its infamous Moscow correspondent Walter Durante. And drones like Rosenbergs and people making mortirs out of them. The paranoia of western capitalism faced with a nation of workers seizing power created both the Civil war, with devastating consequences, and during which Stalin was somewhere probably doing something brave, and allowed a blind eye to be turned to Naziism, even though every educated person knew it would lead to further disaster. I thought you just said that no socialist admired Stalin. Did you ever get diagnosed with bi-polar disorder?
Your admiration for feudal power makes Stalin your boy, socialism is not feudalism. Your education should start somewhere. Now where does the Communist manifesto propose paranoia? Ok, Mr. Hyde is back. Here's what I said: I said that Communist Manifesto calls for a world war. And it absolutely does. Everybody can read it up. It's a straight forward and its available – thank Al Gore for inventing the internet, whether it’s true or not. As many other Marx's hateful, inhuman and mentally sick publications. By the way, if I ever agreed with anything Trotsky ever said, it would be his statement that without Stalin there would never be Hitler. Amen to that. -
Message 17
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Friday, 18th December 2009
Correction: I meant to write Bernard Shaw.
Also, socialism is not feudalism Actually, socialism , or its mathematical limit, so to speak, promoted in Communist Manifesto, is exactly what centralized feudalism is, or worse. The difference is that instead of many masters you have a centralized body of masters - a Politburo of sorts - who own everything, i.e., "the means of production" and every other mean of whatever; this master body assigns people to their "appropriate" line of work; orders how much of said work they must perform; decides how much of food, sleep, rest, clothing, housing, etc, etc, they are allowed to have. In other words, as Viktor Suvorov simply and brilliantly put it, this model was succesfully piloted in GULAG. Only Stalin was humane enough to keep only a portion of his population completely and utterly enslaved. The rest were just scared to death. -
Message 18
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Wednesday, 30th December 2009
Absolute rubbish.
Come back when you know some basics of Capitalism, let alone its inevitable successor.
Stalin was a Czar, true, but then, he wasn't a follower of Marx.
To quote Orwell onMarx:
To quote Orwell on Marx:
"It could be claimed, for example, that the most important part of Marx's theory is contained in the saying: 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'
But before Marx developed it, what force had that saying had? Who had paid any attention to it? Who had inferred from it ? what it certainly implies ? that laws, religions and moral codes are all a superstructure built over existing property relations? It was Christ, according to the Gospel, who uttered the text, but it was Marx who brought it to life. And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion ? which, of course, is why they hate him so much." -
Message 19
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Wednesday, 30th December 2009
Stalin was a Czar, true, but then, he wasn't a follower of Marx. Oh yes. Also, Lenin was Kyp Durron, Dzerzhinsky was General Airen Cracken, Mao Dzedun was Jar Jar Binks, and Pol Pot was Darth Bane. Needless to say that none of them were Marxists.
Come back when you know some basics of Capitalism, let alone its inevitable successor. Just as soon as the inevitable successor figures out how Marxism REALLY works. It has been tried not once, all right, but - apart from the piles of dead bodies - there is still little to show for it. But it is inevitable and we all should embrace the newly anointed one to try - at whatever cost. The idea is so compelling that there is absolutely nothing - including our future generations – that we're not ready to sacrifice on its altar. -
Message 20
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Wednesday, 30th December 2009
Unfortunately, I haven't seen the program, but my interpretation of Robespierre's psychology would be that he was trapped in this impossibility of being "purely virtuous". Because all human virtue is relative, he always had to define his own virtue by denouncing others as less virtuous than himself. In a muckraking journalist, that would have been a relatively harmless obsession; in an absolute dictator it had frightful consequences. Because his power rested on his public image of virtuousness, he could never stop his denunciations, until silenced by force.
I think it is naive the see the Revolution as something that started out virtuous and gradually became debased. It started out as an exercise in practical politics, inspired by the necessity to give France new institutions because the old ones had conspicuously failed to safeguard the future of the country. And practical politics requires that people get their hands dirty. People certainly brought their enlightenment ideals and belief in rationality onto the scene, but they also brought political pragmatism, manipulation of the crowds, and the need to have workable compromises.
The emphasis on virtue and ideology was part of the decay of the institutions, and not a symptom but the essence of the decay. People were no longer were able to agree to disagree, but saw it as a necessity to harshly condemn those they disagreed with. That a man like Condorcet could become the victim of persecution by the "virtuous" indicates how far politics had become debased. -
Message 21
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
Revolutions are based on false beliefs about the perfectibility and malleability of human nature and therefore must always lead to escalating use of force to try to obtain the unobtainable. Revolutionary leaders end up as God-figures because they are trying to take on the God-role of remaking human nature.
Baz cites the American exception. There was no American exception because there was no revolution in America--only a rebellion against an overseas government with preservation of local governmental institutions, pre-existing courts, laws, and social relationships.
Constant efforts to improve social arrangements and law, to root out unfair practices, and institute better ones for the present and future are necessary to the survival of a civilisation and a blessing to mankind--when they are done with a firm grip on the steady rail of established institutions, a cautious awareness of unintended consequences of good intentions, and most of all, an appreciation for the humanness of both ruler and ruled--for their avarice, greed, selfishness, hubris, foolishness, ignorance, and occasionally just plain meanness.
We are forever forgetting that while some practices of the past have lost their usefulness, most that seem to have become obsolete only seem so because we have forgotten why we instituted them in the first place. Whether speaking of social institutions like marriage or legal ones like property rights and rule of law, when we tear them down in conviction that they are what stand between us and heaven on earth, we then find that it was in fact those institutions that stood between us and hell on earth. We get to learn the lesson all over again. -
Message 22
Posted by White Camry (U2321601) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
KB,
We are forever forgetting that while some practices of the past have lost their usefulness, most that seem to have become obsolete only seem so because we have forgotten why we instituted them in the first place. Whether speaking of social institutions like marriage or legal ones like property rights and rule of law, when we tear them down in conviction that they are what stand between us and heaven on earth, we then find that it was in fact those institutions that stood between us and hell on earth. We get to learn the lesson all over again.Â
We could begin by referring to the American Revolution as that - a Revolution. No, not one by the standards of chronically fashionable wannabe-Marxist poseurs, but a Revolution nonetheless. The Americans of that time called it a Revolution because there'd been a Revolution in their self-definitions and self-expectations; the heart-and-lungs of any wide-spread social change.
Too many today prefer to dismiss with a sneer the idea of calling it a Revolution. That's because ideas which were so revolutionary then are "but of course" common sense today. In that regard, the AR accomplished its goals. -
Message 23
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Tuesday, 12th January 2010
cmedog47,
That of course is the point of view of a traditional conservative. I don't disagree with it, but we have to be aware of the risk "constructing our own past" and then claiming continuity from it.
Take the example of marriage. It easy to imagine, if you are a conservative, that there was a simple past determined by Christian morality, in which people got married in Church and did not divorce. The reality of the past was often rather different. Modern apparently "innovative" relationship patterns, for example those in which people live together for years before they decide to get married (or not), actually also have a weight of tradition behind them. And where divorce was legally impossible, annulment was once surprisingly common.
As for the American Revolution, it would have been a rebellion if the Americans had chosen themselves a king, or had decided to continue to formally recognize the authority of George III. Even William of Orange had issued his decrees in the name of Philip II of Spain (perhaps also out of a desire to annoy). In the mid-18th century, "democracy" did not have a positive connotation for most people. -
Message 24
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Friday, 2nd July 2010
You are replying to:
Message posted by suvorovetz
Just as soon as the inevitable successor figures out how Marxism REALLY works. It has been tried not once, all right, but - apart from the piles of dead bodies - there is still little to show for it.Â
It has been appropriated a few times. It has been planted in dry, sterile soil in the mistaken assumption that mangoes can grow in Sweden.
And you make the usual mistake of the Daily Mail expert on Marxism in assuming that it is a matter of making it happen, either by mass consent or not.
The truth is that the process Marx described is a historical one, one which sees the true fate of capitalism and its constant state of war, and envisions in general terms the only logical, sustainable system which a species as intelligent as Homo Sapiens can adopt on a finite planet in their own survival.
Almost every motormouth who insists that Stalin is the St Paul of Marxism, rather than its Torquemada, sounds exactly like those who insisted equally loudly that If God Had meant Us To Fly He Would Have Given Us Wings.
(Early Attempts at Socialism)
As for the monstrous death toll of industrial capitalism, where do you want to start?
The slave trade would be a nice convenient place, essential as it was to the birth of the industrial revolution.
Add to that all the manufactured famines, wars and depressions, and the mad Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili acquires his true historical perspective. -
Message 25
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
Slavery is the antithesis of capitalism. Even so, setting aside the toll in human misery and degradation, the body count for communism is unprecedented:
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Message 26
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
The commodification and sale of labour and lives is the essence of capitalism, which is why slavery played such a key part in capitalism's history.
The name may have changed from time to time and from place to place, but it was still the process of extracting all the work possible out of humanity for no credible return. -
Message 27
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
Slavery has played an even bigger part in the history (upto and including the present day) of communism from the role of the gulags in the Soviet Union to the estimated 1m prisoners in forced labour camps in present day China.
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Message 28
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Saturday, 3rd July 2010
And what have those regimes got to do with the teachings of Marx, which we were discussing?
Please don't make me overturn all the old daily Mail lies again, please.
Stalin represented socialism as much as Torquemada represented Christ.
But since you raise the comparison, how many soviet slaves were sold at auction? -
Message 29
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
None of course--because in a soviet system there are no auctions the auction being the quintessentially capitalist way of distributing resources which is founded on fundamentally anti-soviet ideas: individual ownership of property and freedom in determining price and disposition of property.
No, in the soviet system the resource--slave labor in this case--is distributed like all resources by a committee. That is where it is determined how many will be sent to the uranium mine and how many to clear mine fields.
For the slave it makes no difference--except for this: the soviet slave, like all soviet property, representing no personal financial value to any particular owner, has a much shorter useful life than his capitalist counterpart due to dreadfully neglectful maintenance. -
Message 30
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
So since you cannot define a slave other than in terms of commercial exchange, where does Marx say that slave-labour is an essential part of socialism?
The forced labour in the soviet union was as natural as in any feudal system. And the soviet union was a feudal system just like its predecessor. Many of the people alive in 1917, possibly even a majority of the Russian Empire, were only a few decades away from being serfs. Stalin merely adopted all the power structures of Czarism, plugged it into an electricity generator, and scared away the gods.
It was no more a socialist society than the Spain of Torquemada was Christian, a fact acknowledged by virtually every socialist of the last 70 years, but still hidden by the popular media. The same media in many cases who were hailing him as Uncle Joe during the war. The same media who were hailing 'Hurrah for the Blackshirts!' a few years earlier. -
Message 31
Posted by cmedog47 (U3614178) on Saturday, 10th July 2010
It was your question and I just answered it and pointed out how the question was irrelevant as soviet systems have no auctions.
I made no effort to define slavery and can easily do so in terms other than commercial exchange. That is rather a limitation which you seem to have whenever it seems helpful to your argument which is to defend marxism. Of course any argumentation is only useful insofar as the participants share certain commonalities in respect for the truth and for the meaning of terms. I have found Marxists to be as unreliable in that respect as any religious cultists.
Now that the question has been answered unfavorably for soviet systems, you assert that those soviet systems really have nothing to do with Marxism. Well, it is consistently what one gets when Marxists move out of the library where it looks so appealing to odiferous losers to the real world where real people abide.
BTW, a slave is defined not by commercial exchange. If one did so than one would say that the very few of those in bonded labor in the southern US 150 years ago were slaves as very few were ever sold, most remaining throughout their lives with one family.
No, a slave is defined by the use of force or threat of force to extract labor that would not otherwise be voluntarily given. The lack of freedom to walk off the job and try to get your bread by some other means--to sell your labor to another or turn your labor to producing products that you hope to then sell.
Capitalism is not a "system". It is what one gets when people are free and might organize itself in several different ways depending on the culture and values of the free people who are engaged in it. It is ever changing and adapting because the people whose net summation of individual choices create it are themselves very adaptable creatures who are constantly learning.
Slavery is not a product of capitalism. It is a product of the nastier side of humanity---a willingness to use force to compel ones fellow to serve his desires. Sometimes that desire is material greed, sometimes it is hubris (a desire to be God and remake the world), sometimes lust--whatever sin you can imagine. It tends to manifest itself in some form or another wherever power gets concentrated for too long in the hands of those who are therefore free to act without effective opposition. We see it in capitalism where there is no state powerful enough to stop powerful private parties from dispensing with the inconveniences of voluntary exchange for labor. We see it in theocracies where unopposed power is held by clergy. It is natural and inevitable that we would see it in soviet systems where a political faction has taken adequate control of the society to break down those forces that might stop it from doing so.
To paraphrase a speech given recently by Anton Scalia, none of the terrible tyrants of the 20th century set out to create an evil state. Neither Lenin nor Stalin nor Hitler. They said "Let us take the means necessary to create a more equal society" or "Let us take the means necessary to revive the German nation". To accomplish these things, they concentrated power and removed institutions and processes which defied their will to do what they deemed to be the good. The laws of human nature did the rest. -
Message 32
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Monday, 12th July 2010
You didn't answer the question at all, merely blamed slavery on human evil, which is nothing but a belief in witchcraft. And, by the way, let's Marxism off the hook entirely, if that was your intention.
And like all indoctrinated reactionaries, you cannot provide a shred of evidence to link Marx and Stalin, let alone any modern socialist thought and Stalin, or of any credible, ideological connections between Marxism and Pol Pot (creation of US foreign policy, or Mao (extension of Confucian oligarchy as old as China itself).
But you only know the Marxism you have been fed. So that's hardly surprising.
Slavery was the backbone of the industrial capitalism Marx anatomised so perfectly, as first perfected in Britain. The demand for slave goods and the products of slave labour, first in the Americas then in India created vast amounts of profit for British business. And even after human trading was declared illegal, the condition of those creating the wealth didn't improve that much. In many parts of the world it still hasn't. people are still harnessed to the plough and waterbucket like animals.
So throughout its history capitalism has relied on one form of slavery or another, and committed all the crimes of Stalin, but in a slightly different cause. Though not that different. -
Message 33
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Monday, 12th July 2010
And like all indoctrinated reactionaries,Â
Please, how is that ever going to stimulate historical debate beyond the "yah, boo, you're indoctrinated too" level?
ideological connections between Marxism and Pol PotÂ
Pol Pot in his own words was quite clear about his Marxist views. Of course they may be different to yours, but he would have claimed your views aren't socialist either.
Pol Pot (creation of US foreign policyÂ
Only in the left wing cannon of anti-Americanism. Pol Pot came from the French left and was supported wholly by communist China throughout the worst period of atrocities.
BTW, if you're claiming the Daily Mail today is tarred with the supporting Hitler brush, then logic asserts you have to accept that the left are supporters of Stalin. The Daily Mail stopped lauding Hitler (not that it had ever really done much of it anyway) long before the British left started to demonise Stalin. Interestingly the British Communist Party was fully behind protests against the war with Germany (in line with Stalin's policy) right up to the invasion of the Soviet Union. -
Message 34
Posted by shivfan (U2435266) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
I'm a bit reluctant to call the forced labour in the Soviet system or anywhere else 'slavery', because it's not exactly legalised, as the system was in the Americas and the Caribbean in the 16th-19th centuries. Rather, a comparison with serfdom is probably better....
But to refer back to the opening post, I thought it might be worthwhile pointing out that while Robespierre has been deservedly slated for using terror as a method of control, it's useful to remember his role in the anti-slavery movement. Robespierre was actually the first European leader to abolish slavery, without regard to its economic consequences. It seems to have been primarily as a result of his personal convictions, and those of his Jacobin allies. The abolition of slavery immediately affected St Domingue (later Haiti) and to a lesser extent the other Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. When Napoleon came to power, he tried to reinstate slavery in the Caribbean, and while he succeeded in Martinique and Guadeloupe, he failed in St Domingue/Haiti.
Eventually, the rest of the European leaders came around to Robespierre's thinking that slavery was wrong, and abolished it. Funny how he doesn't get much credit for that.... -
Message 35
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
PolPot's rise to power and Cambodia's descent into madness was the result of Nixon's decision to bomb it back into the stone age. The western backed Civil war in Russia had much the same effect.
Resistance movements like those in Vietnam and Cuba are not socialist, especially in non-industrialised states.
And the liberators of the Cambodian people from Pol Pot's psychotic regime were the Vietnamese. So what does that make them?
Your standard infantile political logic falls down at every turn. And you still cannot provide the slenderest direct connection between any of your Bogeymen and Marx, either politically or even economically. The fact they called themselves socialists is totally irrelevant. As is your sterile political demonology.
Revolution is a concept which is constantly progressing according to the technologies of the time. And the ultimate revolution is not one which sees barricades and the storming of prisons, but which reveals the irrelevance of the obsolete. In this case, the irrelevance of property and the nation state in an age in which transactions and thoughts can be exchanged across the world by anyone with access to a computer. -
Message 36
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
PolPot's rise to power and Cambodia's descent into madness was the result of Nixon's decision to bomb it back into the stone age. Â
The US bombing was mostly in response to a North Vietnamese threat. The fact that they willingly allowed Lon Nol to target Khmer Rouge as well is somehow American support?
It's worth noting that the Khmer Rouge were on the way up before the bombing started.
Resistance movements like those in Vietnam and Cuba are not socialist, especially in non-industrialised states.
And the liberators of the Cambodian people from Pol Pot's psychotic regime were the Vietnamese. So what does that make them?
Your standard infantile political logic...Â
Sorry, but if you want to play logic, you can not claim the North Vietnamese were not Socialist and then claim the Khmer Rouge can't have been socialist because they were deposed by the North Vietnamese regime.
Both Cuba and North Vietnam would soundly disagree with your assessment of them. Just because it siuts your argument, why should I believe you rather than them?
This isn't my infantile political logic, I'm perfectly willing to accept that some left wing regimes are very bad and some left wing regimes do a great deal of good for their citizens.
And you still cannot provide the slenderest direct connection between any of your Bogeymen and Marx, either politically or even economically.Â
Honestly? I don't intend to. But it is a matter of historical fact that whenever anyone claims to have implemented a Marxist soiciety that they inevitably end up killing on a grand scale. I'm more than happy to accept that YOUR definition of Marxism wouldn't slaughter by the truck-full, but other people's definition of Marxism in practice always has done.
As is your sterile political demonologyÂ
Possibly, but around the world self-proclaimed Marxists never managed to achieve that Utopia you seem to desire. Instead the political prisons and enforced labour camps proliferate.
Revolution is a concept which is constantly progressing according to the technologies of the time. And the ultimate revolution is not one which sees barricades and the storming of prisons,Â
With respect, you'd be better off telling that to Marxists because those who managed to achieve power displayed a complete ignorance of such message. -
Message 37
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
PolPot's rise to power and Cambodia's descent into madness was the result of Nixon's decision to bomb it back into the stone age. Â
The US bombing was mostly in response to a North Vietnamese threat. The fact that they willingly allowed Lon Nol to target Khmer Rouge as well is somehow American support?
It's worth noting that the Khmer Rouge were on the way up before the bombing started.
Resistance movements like those in Vietnam and Cuba are not socialist, especially in non-industrialised states.
And the liberators of the Cambodian people from Pol Pot's psychotic regime were the Vietnamese. So what does that make them?
Your standard infantile political logic...Â
Sorry, but if you want to play logic, you can not claim the North Vietnamese were not Socialist and then claim the Khmer Rouge can't have been socialist because they were deposed by the North Vietnamese regime.
Both Cuba and North Vietnam would soundly disagree with your assessment of them. Just because it suits your argument, why should I believe you rather than them?
This isn't my infantile political logic, I'm perfectly willing to accept that some left wing regimes are very bad and some left wing regimes do a great deal of good for their citizens.
And you still cannot provide the slenderest direct connection between any of your Bogeymen and Marx, either politically or even economically.Â
Honestly? I don't intend to. But it is a matter of historical fact that whenever anyone claims to have implemented a Marxist soiciety that they inevitably end up killing on a grand scale. I'm more than happy to accept that YOUR definition of Marxism wouldn't slaughter by the truck-full, but other people's definition of Marxism in practice always has done.
As is your sterile political demonologyÂ
Possibly, but around the world self-proclaimed Marxists never managed to achieve that Utopia you seem to desire. Instead the political prisons and enforced labour camps proliferate.
Revolution is a concept which is constantly progressing according to the technologies of the time. And the ultimate revolution is not one which sees barricades and the storming of prisons,Â
With respect, you'd be better off telling that to Marxists because those who managed to achieve power displayed a complete ignorance of such message. -
Message 38
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
Sorry, but if you want to play logic, you can not claim the North Vietnamese were not Socialist and then claim the Khmer Rouge can't have been socialist because they were deposed by the North Vietnamese regime. Â
I never said they were socialist, I asked you what you think they were. You're the one claiming that anyone who calls themself a socialist is a socialist. Like Fred West calling himself a Christian.
If you say the Viet Minh were socialist, and all socialists are the same, namely the same as Pol-Pot, what were they doing invading and preventing his splendid mass murder?
That would make them different kind of socialist, even to you. Which means that not all socialists are PolPot, or Stalin, which is no surprise to me but obviously is to you. Now you'll have top rethink the whole idea from scratch. With an open mind, this time, please. For your own good.
No thinking socialist has yearned for an Utopia since before Orwell wrote this in 1943:
"The real objective of Socialism is human brotherhood. This is widely felt to be the case, though it is not usually said, or not said loudly enough. Men use up their lives in heart-breaking political struggles, or get themselves killed in civil wars, or tortured in the secret prisons of the Gestapo, not in order to establish some central-heated, air-conditioned, strip-lighted Paradise, but because they want a world in which human beings love one another instead of swindling and murdering one another. And they want that world as a first step. Where they go from there is not so certain, and the attempt to foresee it in detail merely confuses the issue."
Whatever the Cubans and Vietnamese may claim, they are not socialist societies, and are not even candidates for socialism according to Marx. Revolution requires class consciousness, which requires a class system which requires an industrial proletariat. It rewuires capitalist democracy to ahve replaced feudalism. It requires a degree of mechanisation which makes grinding manual labour and ignorance unneccesary. It is the logical consequence of that level of technology. This is not the case in feudal agricultural states. And most notably, was not the case in Czarist Russia, which was still culturally a slave state. -
Message 39
Posted by cloudyj (U1773646) on Tuesday, 13th July 2010
You're the one claiming that anyone who calls themself a socialist is a socialist.Â
With respect Dai, you've completely missed my point. I don't think everyone claiming to be a Marxist is the same. I'm merely pointing out that you and Pol Pot have different interpretations of Marxism. It suits your argument to say he was wrong, but equally it would have suited his argument to say you were wrong.
I do find it mildly amusing that the left have a view of "the left is good therefore anyone from doing anything bad must be from the right even when they claim they're form the left". Marxists are just as capable as fascists in believing that force is needed to thrust their views on the unwilling - all "for the common good" naturally.
My own view is that Marxism in theory is a very different beast to Marxism in practice. Personal experience of Marxists in the UK leads me to fully accept that they honestly and nobly believe that their philosophy will lead to the betterment of humanity - I do not doubt their motives (though I disagree with some principles). However, Marx is not a great work manual of how to do it, that had to be improvised time and time again and had always killed and imprisoned on a shocking scale.
Now you'll have top rethink the whole idea from scratch. With an open mind,Â
Dai, do you not think it a bit arrogant to assume that an open-minded assessment will always lead to agreement with your views?
I have thought about things with an open mind and simply come to a different conclusion to you conclusion. I, of course, want others to be persuaded by my view, just as you do about your view. That isn't close-mindedness or indoctrination, just a differnt opinion.
Pol Pot, Stalin and co all believed that only indoctrinated fools or evil-doers could arrive at a different conlusion, which was why they found it so easy to kill such people when re-education through slavery failed. -
Message 40
Posted by Dai Digital (U13628545) on Thursday, 15th July 2010
And General Franco and Alastair Darling had different interpretations of capitalism. What IS your point, in that case?
Your 'own view' of Marxism is based on much hearsay, lots of hysteria, and no imagination.
And since your tactic of tarring all socialists with the same brush has failed, what else have you got to offer? Just the same old stale defence of the status quo. Capitalism is always right, in spite of all the evidence that it is falling apart at the seams.
The fact that there have been bodged attempts to prematurely inflict socialism on societies without an industrial class structure is no condemnation of socialism. No more than the pioneers of flight before the Wright Brothers proved that flight was impossible.
The main failing of socialist tactics has been to invent and promote utopias. This is always a mistake. Movements should simply stick to the essentials, as the unions used to before they were neutered as a force.
The fact is that Capitalism is eating the planet. Which is why its apologists are terrified of ecologists in any shape or form. And it is so inherently overblown and unstable that it could die from its next double cheeseburger.
An alternative has to be found, and since we are on a shrinking planet, the priority will have to be on exploiting the natural human skill of co-operation and sharing. The only other option is a final battle for the scraps, and the elimination of most of humanity.
Capitalism is a competitive doctrine, and therefore excludes itself. The only other options are some form of libertarian anarchy, complete with private arsenals and booby traps.
Or some form of collaborative effort to overcome the known general threat of environmental and resource crisis which will require a radical re-appraisal of our concept of property and ownership. Which is as close to socialism as makes no difference
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