We are constantly told that solutions to some of the greatest challenges facing poor and working class people in the U.S. do not exist. Meanwhile, billions taxpayer dollars are being used to fund the genocide of Palestinians.
That very money could have ended homelessness in the United States.
Money for our needs, not the U.S.-Israeli war machine!
There’s a part of my brain that totally gets the logic behind needing a revolution to shake up the system, but then the other part of me is like, ‘Violence? Nah, hard pass.’ So I end up with this funny little cognitive dissonance. I’m all, ‘Yeah, REVOLUTION!’ and at the same time, ‘But let’s make sure no one gets hurt, okay?’ It’s like being stuck between a revolution and a group hug, if that even makes sense!
Marxists would pick reform 100% of the time. The reason Marxists are revolutionary is not because they desire violence, but because reform is about as likely as asking the owner-board of your local megacorp to hand over the regins. Impossible without force.
Absolutely, it’s unfortunately a law of the status quo. My biggest concern is that once force is used to take the reins, you’re stuck defending them, which just brings us back to the same place. I’ll admit, I’m likely ignorant of many Marxist ideas. Maybe they have a solution for that, but knowing how humans tend to operate, things often fall short of ideals. Are there any proposals in Marxist thought that address how to avoid falling into the trap of constantly defending the new status quo? I’d love to understand more about that, because honestly, I don’t know what the solution would be. That’s way above my pay grade!
That’s a complicated question. The short answer is that, until Socialism is established world-wide, states are necessary, along with millitaries to defend them. All AES states have had to defend themselves, the USSR was invaded by 14 Capitalist nations right after the October Revolution.
Additionally, Socialism is not “the same place as before.” Establishing Socialism through revolution has fundamentally changed who has the reigns, the bourgeoisie vs the proletariat.
Have you read any Marxist theory? I can give some reading lists, either a “full course” or I can recommend specific works going over the Marxist theory of revolution and the state, but that may raise more questions than it answers.
Trying to plead with corporatists to reform is wasting your breath as they will offer empty promises to do something after your support is required then inevitably do fuck all afterwards, saying either they need to get so many other things done or they’ll look at your concerns at the next election cycle/when they need your support.
Also when corporatists realise their coercion has failed, they will immediately use violence to obtain your complicit obedience.
‘Violence? Nah, hard pass.’
people are experience violence in this genocide to maintain the lifestyle that we’re accustomed to.
we’re still choosing violence when we support politicians who enable violence; it’s just that, that violence isn’t for us this time around.
our declining status gaurantees that the violence will eventually come back to bite us in the ass and the sooner we change things; the less violent it will be.
the sooner we change things; the less violent it will be.
this is the most succinct argument illustrating the issue that I’ve seen so far, kudos!
unfortunately for us we’ve doing it for around 100 years so far so violence is already a guarantee.
the best we can do is minimize it; but an overwhelming majority hold a similar opinion to the one you shared and are acting upon it by voting for politicians whose actions are in direct contradiction to that minimization.
This is a good article on why pacifism has not helped us overturn injustice historically, and won’t in the future.
You’re thinking of non-violent pacifism. I am a violent pacifist. I say all the non-gunned people should attack guns people with their bare hand and destroy the guns unless there’s no more guns, no more gunplants. Punch them in their disguisting face until they’re bloody remains are nothing but meated flesh.
I do understand this to some degree, and unfortunately, only through the lens of privilege, I’m sure. I will have to read this in full later, but my quick glance take-away is that, by being a pacifist you essentially will be ruled by those who don’t care at all and will commit atrocities against you, and, the least anyone can do is to defend themselves? Please correct me, and as I said, still need to read the entire thing!
“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.”
― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
