- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
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“We need to take it by force” does not necessarily follow “They won’t give up power voluntarily”. People with civil war fantasies need to have a sit down and have a long fucking think about what that implies. What we need to do is revive a culture of labor solidarity that we’ve allowed to wither since the heyday of labor unions in the country.
eat the rich.
One billionare showing up publicly lynched or drawn and quartered will get the rest in line. If not, two or three dozen more will do the trick.
No. What will happen is the rich will surround themselves with more security and will have a legitimate reason to be more aggressive towards who they consider a menace. If you want to change society, get involved in politics, involve those who think like you, and be patient.
That historically works out great for the oppressed hungry masses with nothing to lose.
It kinda does. The New Deal, minimum wage laws, education reforms in many countries in the 60s are a few examples that come to mind. But now your turn: when has a violent revolution been beneficial to the oppressed masses in the last two centuries?
WWII
Yeah just shut up and take it!
That’ll show the powerful who’s boss!
Yeah they will, but they won’t stop either way. You have to kill them all. There is no functional society with billionaires in it.
If your idea of a functional society is one where all billionaires have been killed, I wouldn’t call it functional.
Think how much resources will be freed up when the dragon hording the gold is killed and the communities can share the enormous wealth to fix the problems that came from the dragon hording everything and letting everything else degrade around him.
It would give them more power. You wanna see what psychopathic minds given a reason to work together and given victim cards can do? I don’t.
The rich are brought in line by denying them of power, not feeding them more power by offering reasons for them to get protected even more.
You wanna go that route, be prepared for a lot of collateral damage and extended times of hardship.
Sounds like you’re scared. You should be.
That…doesn’t even make sense.
Scared of what? The rich or the lynchings?
In context, you kind of just sound like an evil rich person trying to threaten me lol. I imagine that wasn’t the dramatic effect you were going for.
Yall realize many of the rights we have as laborers now we’re won with force… Right?
Like, yes collective bargaining, labor solidarity, etc. is super important (which is also a form of force) but there were literal armed conflicts between laborers and the police on behalf of companies.
I’m not saying we need a civil war, but let’s not pretend we won our rights today without bloodshed.
Edit: Left out a key word, whoops.
I’m saying we need a civil war, but let’s not pretend we won our rights today without bloodshed.
Oh, I didn’t mean it like that. More that using force as the tool of overthrow is fundamentally a mistake. Obviously in any sufficiently powerful labor movement there will, inevitably, be those who attempt to use both legal and illegal force to disperse them. Force is thus necessary to defend the other processes of labor solidarity - forming unions, protests, strikes, lockouts, etc.
Many people, not all of them unreasonably, will side with the system in the case of a violent revolution, though. When a shooting war starts, you can’t un-shoot the bullet once you realize the death toll will reach the millions - it will be carried on to its gruesome end, and that may not be to a left-wing victory.
For those who think that a revolution would have overwhelming popular support, for God’s sake, a third of the country still believes nonwhite and LGBT folk are inferior, and another third doesn’t fucking care. Supporting a violent leftist overthrow is not gonna be on the agenda for them, no matter how much theory you’ve read and how solid your arguments about their exploitation are. The last third will be difficult to convince - not unreasonably, considering the value placed on democratic ideals and processes.
And the situation is similar, if less severe, in other developed countries at this time.
Fwiw I did mean to say, “I’m not saying we need a civil war.” Though, honestly, I’m not saying we don’t either. It just wasn’t really the point I was trying to make in that moment.
I think I more or less agree with you though. Violence is not necessarily my first choice, but it’s naive to think the opposition will listen without it. Or at the very least the threat of it.
The reality is that our power structures heavily favor the owning class, and they’re not going to hand over that power laying down. Collective action and such is of course the first step, but as you mentioned force will be used to dispurse labor movements.
And they’re definitely willing to use force to protect their entrenchment. If you’ve got a different way to get power back please start working on it now because we’re running out of time to do anything other than kill them all.
No they don’t realise.
People have been propagandised to so much they have no comprehension how much blood was spilt in pursuit of barely tolerable working conditions.
If we can’t keep them without killing each other then we are just repeating a cycle. But freedom of choice is more important than forcing politics and beliefs on people just so they cooperate. Me nor anyone I know is going to engage in murder just to get my way. I did my part, I have no kids to perpetuate the cycle. Stop providing the machine with fodder and the issue solves itself.
My guy, who do you think shot first?
I’m sorry but if you’re saying when people trying unionize or collectively bargain for better conditions start getting shot at they should just give up or lay down and take it you’re a fool.
There’s no cycle. That’s the whole problem. They made money the most important thing, required for life, then took all the money and sat on it. There’s no cycle. Yesterday they had the money. Today they have the money. Tomorrow they will still have the money unless the people of this world do something about it.
We might not seek violence, but it’s coming for us if we organize in any way that has a chance to succeed. The history of the last century has been violent crackdowns on labor organizing. From Pinkertons and cops at home to CIA coups and full on military blockades abroad.
We do need to get everyone organized for anything to happen, but we do have to be ready for when that crackdown comes for us.
And yeah. That’s fucking terrifying and I’m pessimistic enough to not really think we have that much of a shot at winning. But it’s wishful thinking to imagine that we could get to the future we want just by playing nice within the system that’s keeping us here.
Yeah it’s like… they’ve got a boot on your neck and you’re worried about you hurting them? Where’s your worry about the people they’re hurting right now?
Aside from that, revolutionary goals don’t even require violence per se. If the people who set this shit up would recognize the will of the people and step aside there’s no need for violence, but you know they’re gonna fight to their last breath to keep the power to hurt and control others. The violence is starting with them.
Organized labor can demand all profits. Then the game of choosing the best investments doesn’t have any winners. There isn’t even money available to invest.
The elite is defending that game because it’s our source of optimizations. Is there a better alternative so that they don’t have to play?
There’s a vast gulf between ‘playing nice’ and ‘use force to overthrow the elite’. There were great strides made in the heyday of labor organization in the 1880s-1930s. There can be great strides made again. The elite are not some organized cabal of rulers plotting against us - they are selfish people who got where they are by being exceptionally selfish. They don’t want to preserve capitalism - they want to preserve themselves. They can be pressured. They can be bargained with. Most of them are rational - that’s their weakness. They’ll accept deals that are good for them, or that they perceive as such, even if it weakens the system as a whole. For God’s sake, we have the best educated generation to ever exist on the face of this planet - planning and bargaining are what we’ve been toiling our miserable white-collar lives around. All we lack is solidarity.
It’s not as satisfying as heads rolling down the streets of Paris - but it’s never just the elite who die in such scenarios. We should be ready for such an occasion as civil war - but it should also be a last resort.
All those strides came with the aforementioned violent crackdowns and the gains were short lived. Leaving the power structure in place and merely trying to bargain with it for a few more scraps left capitalists with the power they needed to erode those gains. And again, to the extent any progress was made, it was within the imperial core. All those other people around the world who were being exploited by international capital didn’t enjoy any of the benefits of the bargaining that went on here.
You have to ignore a lot of the reality of history to believe in the story of peaceful incremental progress.
Man, if you don’t think we’ve made significant progress since the 1880s, I don’t know what to tell you.
And again, to the extent any progress was made, it was within the imperial core.
Oh no, you’re one of those.
One of what? Someone who gives a shit about anyone besides people in one country?
No, the kind of idiot who says “Both sides” in the Ukrainian War are bad because the Imperial Core is Exploiting the Helpless Foreign Countries. It’s reverse White Man’s Burden, and ethnocentric as fuck.
So are we just supposed to be ok with all the people who died in wars or coups because the US wanted to make sure no country could successfully do communism or even just decide not to give away all their resources for cheap?
I think it’s pretty clear that the rich are not rational actors and neither can they be trusted.
Rationality does not imply wisdom, nor intelligence, nor far-sightedness. But most of the elite are more Rupert Murdoch than Elon Musk - they are rational rather than irrational.
All it implies is that rich folk, generally, will do what most people will do in situations involving one’s livelihood and assets - assess it according to their biases, determine their possible profit or loss and its likelihood, and choose the course of action that seems most suited to their risk tolerance.
We don’t need a civil war, we need to kill the billionaires
If you think that happens without a civil war, you haven’t been paying attention.
Force doesn’t necessarily imply bloodshed, but forcing them to give up what they have against their will definitely implies force - I think we’re well beyond the point of simple persuasion.
I mean, I actually believe that it won’t be accomplished without bloodshed - but there’s a world of difference between ‘civil unrest’ and ‘civil war’, and I see people fantasizing about the latter far too often. Force is the tool workers use to prevent the use of overwhelming force against the workers - but using it as a tool of overthrow itself is… often strategically unsound, unless matters have already spiraled into chaos.
This is where supposedly communist regimes tend to go wrong - they skip straight to revolution without taking the necessary preparatory steps to do things like level inequality and shore up democracy. This just means that the wealth and power reconsolidate almost immediately into authoritarian state capitalism or similar - generally a worse state than preceded it, and definitely not communism.
The force is necessary though.
The force is necessary though.
Again, I don’t dispute that force is necessary for self-defense, for pressuring the government, and, once taken by democratic means, for use of state force to implement the necessary changes. Only that the use of force to overthrow the government is probably a strategic mistake at this junction, moral issues aside. No coup worth succeeding will succeed, and civil war would be… brutal, even if by some miracle leftist forces emerged and won.
I think we probably agree but are caught up in semantics and details.
I think we probably agree but are caught up in semantics and details.
Nailed it.
this is what liberals actually believe
The Russians, Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans, and Cubans should have leveled inequality and shored up democracy before they took power.
For all your sneering stupidity, you forgot your point. Are you saying they’re actually democracies, or that there is a more effective set of material conditiond to establish to stop them rapidly sliding into autocracy?
You seem to think authoritarian states where wealth is consolidated and noone but members of the single party can vote for the single leader are sufficiently democratic and didn’t follow a predictable path toward autocracy - or that it’s desirable and democratic for that to happen. Just about any state that isn’t busy larping at communism does a better job at democracy.
You want to throw the DPRK into the mix too, champ?
I guess I gotta spell it out:
Those “supposedly communist regimes” couldn’t “level inequality” or “shore up democracy” because they weren’t in power. They had to “skip straight to revolution” to get in power and accomplish their goals. In all the examples I brought up, and one of them is the dprk, inequality was leveled and democracy shored up after the revolution.
The idea that somehow the Kuomintang, tsar, Bautista puppet state, Rhee puppet state or Diem, the french who preceded him or Americans that came after would simply allow fundamental changes to the social and economic system of oppression that kept them in power for any reason at all but especially to create more equal, democratic and egalitarian societies is so absurd I almost don’t know where to start.
People don’t “skip straight to revolution”, it’s a necessary step to changing society.
Now you might suggest that those revolutionaries should have used nonviolent methods first, and that’s pretty out there when you consider the actual conditions each country was under when those revolutions began, but I understand that you would be suggesting that because you believe truly that nonviolent means can achieve the same ends as revolution.
In response I would direct your attention to Chile, where socialist Allende won a democratic election only for his every action to be stymied by the capitalist west and to ultimately be executed by a us backed fascist coup when they couldn’t destroy the country without violence.
I also wanna take just a second and ask you to be civil here. There’s no need to call names or insult each other.
Force is fine. Speedrunning straight to toppling the government entirely is at this point a well-established way of creating an autocracy. If that’s the near-inevitable outcome, why topple the government to get something worse? It’s moronic.
You use force to push for change - with the threat of all the violence and revolution backing that. If you have the sustained force required to topple and effectively replace the government with a democratic machine, coercing the existing government into changes to protect your democracy seem straightforward. If you don’t have the numbers or coordination, how do you think starting a government from scratch is going to work out? Helpful hint: Look at historical case-studies.
I don’t understand why ML’s are so keen to bang on about material conditions when they work so hard to ignore them.
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The ruling class loves it when you say stuff like this bud.
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I’d say it started even before that in the 80s the Reagan’s trickle down economics and the fetishization of corporate success.
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You say that as if we tried voting. People keep voting for literally the opposite of the resolution of this problem, it is no wonder it isn’t working for you!
If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles. If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within.
I have watched so many video essays that I read “but Zoe” in the voice of Zoe Bee
Me listening to Democracy Now (fast fwding the constant global rape during war) taking little man to school while he reads in the back… Ignoring me as I ramble about all collar people being the working people, standing by unions, and rising tides.
Same vibes as this lil guy:
But if you use violence against the people who perpetrate violence against everyone who isn’t part of their protected group, you’re just as bad as them. /s
It all depends. For about 97% of the world population, anyone earning more than 40k USD annual salary is part of the 5% elite
I’d wager more than half the population asking for forced takeover enters that range.
So if y’all willing, don’t worry, we third world countries are coming for you. We know you will surrender really easy
This is not how labour relations work
Just a casual call to violence 🤣
Self defense. The rich chose violence centuries ago, and continue to choose violence daily.
👌
It could be non-violent. Organizing workers creates a power structure that can be used against the bourgeoisie.
Ahh the old let’s make the call just vague enough for plausible deniability strategy 😉😉
Troll acount
Not at all. My opinion just isn’t welcome here.
Bro your account name and all your dislikes are hints
I mean I said my opinion isn’t welcome here 🤷♂️
Extend your opinion, instead of a stupid sentence ended by a laughing emoji
Nothing to expand 🤷♂️
You just don’t know how to express arguments. Someone who can’t prove anything should shut up.
This is backwards. The working class is giving their power voluntarily to the elite. There is no force needed to get it, just don’t give it away.
What is missing that people keep voting the way they do? There is nobody to hold power if people prefer to give it away.
Ah yes - pissing away your vote on a third party in a 2 party first-past-the-post system will definitely fix it and not simply empower the greater evil.
It’s only pissing away if you don’t know that others vote alike. With surveys you know when a party is ready to take over.
What portion of the US population do you think have a remotely viable third party option?
None. My point is that the majority is not ready to manage power. If somebody takes it by force, it will rest in the hands of a new elite, which will most likely be corrupted soon after.
Something is missing for the masses to hold power. Instead of organizing a revolution time is better spent on discovering that something.
We already know what’s missing. We keep setting up power structures based on systems that have proven not to work long term. Study The Six Nations. They lasted for 25,000 years. Their power structure was based on a council, not an individual.
I’d love to vote for a candidate who represents my views but have never once in my life been presented with anything even close.
How much time are you willing to invest to make such a candidate available?
I am an Anarchist. I don’t think it matters, the Democratic process doesn’t really include the possibility of the outcome of “we should stop doing all this nonsense”.
Why not? You could even force Anarchy on 49% unwilling citizens even though that should be against the spirit of Anarchism.
There’s a little problem about how it’s illegal. Specifically,
. (See: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385) So first i would have to get some non open anarchist into office who would change that law without letting on as to why. Then elect an anarchist candidate proper.
Only problem is, right now if i were to be voting for the candidates most likely to overturn that particular law right now they’re all Republicans. That’s, uh, not a party that represents me at all except for the odd chance the neurons in their brains fire in the right order and they do the thing to make candidates that represent my views allowed to profess their views openly.
There are actually about a hundred other hurdles to jump before we get to that point, but i think “a candidate who represents my views is a choice in an election” is pretty solidly in the “you don’t want to go there” category.
by force or violence
I don’t see that those paragraphs object to democratic change
Of course you cannot expect Republicans to fully represent you.
If you cannot convince 50% to vote for anarchy you won’t have anarchy if you overthrow the state with violence. All the problems you see, they have to be resolved. It will not be easy and can as well be impossible.
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2139382
A left unity debate.
What do you want the most?
You wanna be the candidate to risk prison time on this one?
Advocating for violence, understandable and at the same time completely despromoted of imagination.
Idc how pissed you are, you’re like “them” if you can only think of ways that involve force, usually masses don’t make the best decisions when going on a rampage.
Make no mistakes, we have to change things, but generalising an incredibly complex situation to a sentence…
Edit: uuu someone’s afraid to actually having to find intelligent ways to make positive changes
Collective action to revolutionize political structures by force doesn’t necessarily entail going on a ‘rampage’ or just murdering your enemies summarily. The state uses force against it’s people and enemies every day. There are many forms force can take.
This reminds me of a nice Mark Twain quote I just posted a little while ago, talking about the French Revolution and the ‘Reign of Terror’:
There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.
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Let’s also not forget that collective action, etc, tends to not be violent. If it utilizes force it tends to do against things or systems, not people. The other side does not hesitate to use violence.
It’s interesting the different ideas people have when they hear ‘force’ or what power and violence are. A worker strike I think is a form of force, in that the employer is forced to work through the demands of the workers or go through the trouble of hiring new workers. The working class is a massive majority compared to the upper class, so when that sort of action is done it doesn’t necessarily have to have any bloodshed.
Imaginationless, is that why you choose to use the words of men who do not live in our times? Justice changes with each generation’s values, and so does the world and how we can do things…
History might repeat itself, but you don’t know what will repeat. You don’t know if these ideas are just taking brilliant minds from a fight that would actually make a positive difference or maybe they will work. Who knows, not me, not you, no one. All I’m saying is, if we have to choose a path, I’ll choose one that will make me less cruel then “them”.
Because I wouldn’t want to become “them” in the middle of my fight against “them”.
I chose those words because someone else quoted them earlier today and I thought it was relevant, it may be from ‘another time’ but the prevailing political and economic structures of today are essentially the same. Is self-defense cruel? If someone is beating someone to death, and you use force to stop that person from murdering them, is that as cruel as murder?
Yhe no, people can read and write, if they are willing to think there would be billions of better way to do it. But yhe sure, what is a quick death by ax compared to starvation…it’s no the world we live in anymore. Read, learn, and you will see more ways to help make a more equal society.
Only then when you piss off whoever it is that tries to come for you, you can claim self defense. Anything else and you stroke first or swooped down to the level of the people you hate.
In what way is the world described in the quote not the world we live in anymore? The life expectancy in the US has been decreasing. People still do starve to death in the US, they die of hypothermia and heat stroke due to lack of shelter, they die from poor working conditions, and nations wage wars in the name of borders or resources every day.
We have also never been so advanced, even if we did it at the cost of the rest of the world.
Hey I like to say that no one fucking knows to I’m just guessing here.
Maybe we die, maybe we evolve, the fact that there are platforms where we can discuss this is delicious to me.
But above it all, I also have no idea, I prefer to think of things as being headed towards every cenario possible, cuz like this I can imagine the worse and the best, even the middle.
If we are frank I don’t think any one really knows which one we’ll end up in either way soo, yhe I just like to think we can make it without stopping to lowest levels, but at the same time I know it might happen.
Hahahahahahha isn’t life wonderful
Very true, I don’t mean to come off like I think anything I say has any kind of certainty haha, even in ancient times the earth and the human mind are so complex that really how can we make any solid predictions. I agree that it’s good to try to imagine the best and worst ways any trend can go.
Life can be great and horrific haha, my mom would say ‘try not to take things too seriously because no one makes it out alive anyway’ :p
Did we forget to say “please” when asking them to stop underpaying us as they get wealthy off our hard work, spending billions of dollars to entrench their position by corrupting our democracy, funding the politicians that are supposed to represent us and the media that’s supposed to inform us.
I notice you haven’t exercised that imagination of yours to present a way to get them to simply give up their political and economic power of their own accord - please don’t hold out on us.
I’m not your daddy, you find your own ways, I’m no jesus to go out there telling my fellow humans how to act, I only argument against points of view I don’t agree with. If you can’t find your own way to change my mind or to go forward with your own ideas that’s one thing. But don’t drag other people in there like if your goals are the same.
There are many, but most of them require intelligence and cunning. Require work since a very fucking young age towards that direction.
You seems to be lacking ideas? Well i ain’t no profet, I follow my path you follow yours. How many good ideas wouldn’t work unless you keep them tight to to chess is amz. But if I where to tell you that arguing with you is one of those ideas .
It means I belive you can do better things if you are thinking of non violent solicions cuz even a baby knows violece generates violence.
I won’t tell you how to act cuz I could never find something that would only work with your life experience.
Or maybe you not even intelligent enough to read all of this much less understanding it
“You don’t have any new ideas!”
“Ah well what are your new ideas?”
“No no, I don’t do that”.
Fuck right off.
Dude what I told you was you where an imagineless prick who likes to think he’s educated when he doesn’t even realise that there is more, and after that there is more. I have shit nothing to justify myself to you.
Because the conclusions and Ideas I come to, are the direct result of life experience that cannot be transferred. Even if I tried I wouldn’t know if you would be capable of understanding. Or maybe you would understand perfectly and think of me a fool.
If you think that any one know more or less then you, then you are already in a disadvantage, or maybe not who knows.
Dumbass
So you’ll smugly sit back and tell everyone they’re wrong and stupid while presenting nothing that even resembles a solution?
I suppose that makes about as much sense as questioning my intelligence after spilling that soup of terrible spelling, punctuation and empty pseudo-intellectual truisms on to the internet.
Ok
While I’m still waiting for that point of yours, it’s clear that you’re incapable, and I’m just bullying a child at this point.
Feel free to check back in when you develop that point, or at least pubes.
Ufff someone got pissed
