/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2836715
>However, is revolution always inevitable, or is it only what happens when all other options fail?
Revolutions happen when the old world is dying (the old cannot rule in the old way) and the new is coming (the new cannot rule in a new way) and there is a conscious and organized stratum of people (the subjective factor) ready to seize state power (the state is in a situation of dual power) during a crisis (objective factor of revolution).

The answer to the second and third question is shown in history. Ruling classes never give up power without revolution. Reforms will never lead to revolution, but are desirable on the path to it. Read Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution.

Fourth: there is no teleology in Marxism, so the point is vain.

>>2836721
For argument sake: while ruling classes do not often give up power without revolution, they certainly move around in relative influence. To sort of fudge a national metaphor: Britain remains dominated by its dismal ruling class, but they quite voluntarily relinquished control of the entire world (mostly to the US, but to some degree to national independence movements!)
Or to give an incomplete historical one: Britain integrated the bourgeoisie into its feudal ruling class with relatively little violence. (I refer here less to to the early stage, which had a civil war - albeit a rather silly one that ended in restoring the monarchy instead of forming a republic - and more to the industrial revolution stage of Britain's development. The new factory owners quickly became richer than the old landlords and realised their interests were better served by advancing democratic elections etc, all done under the existing constitutional order.)

One may also tentatively point to the collapse of the eastern bloc. (A mixed case where some parts of the old ruling class lost power, others became part of the new ruling class.)

>>2836755
Sorry, but this some really bad history. The industrial revolution was extremely violent. Yes it's true that sometimes parts of the class which held power before remains in power by some way in a new class dictatorship, but the essence is that it still is a class dictatorship. Even bourgeois can go over to the proletarian revolution. You're trying to draw ahistorical parallels about disconnected events.

>>2836765
The industrial revolution varied from country to country and violence in the sense of social upheaval, rioting, etc, is of a different order to violence of a "actually beheading your ruling class" variety. If some feudal remnants retain power under capitalism, it could follow that some bourgeois remnants hold power in the earlier stages of a peaceful (or only marginally violent but broadly orderly) move to socialism.

(I say this more hypothetically than to advocate electoral reformism, from the perspective that you can neither vote away, nor repress away, nor behead away the underlying state of productive forces.)

>>2836721
>Fourth: there is no teleology in Marxism, so the point is vain.
there may be teleology of the third variety in pic related, depending on how seriously you interpret certain claims of inevitability made by Marx, and whether you think he was speaking literally or poetically. If he was speaking poetically and not literally… should he have been more careful in his wording to avoid potential misinterpretation?

<The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

Source: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm

Are claims of inevitability not telelogy in the the sense of the third definition provided in pic related, i.e. Belief in or the perception of purposeful development toward an end, as in history?

I am also considering other possibilities, like "inevitable" above being mistranslated from some obscure Hegelian German term i have failed to understand with my tiny mind, or perhaps that nothing Marx said in 1848 matters because he had not written Capital yet. I have heard similar arguments about other questions surrounding Marx.

>>2836721
>The answer to the second and third question is shown in history. Ruling classes never give up power without revolution.
Anon several examples were given of slavery and serfdom going away without clear political/social revolutions.

>>2837022
>quoting a political manifesto which ought to mobilize and agitate instead of a more serious work like private correspondence
ishygdtd

>>2837040
>a more serious work like private correspondence
i would argue his private correspondence is less serious

>>2836715
> I think it is indisputable that class struggle plays a foundational role in the history of all societies. However, is revolution always inevitable, or is it only what happens when all other options fail?
I don't think it's inevitable or the only way. But most on here will disagree and avoid this question or respond to it with hostility.
> If other options succeed, is that undesirable for communism, since communists want these changes to happen through revolution?
If you view revolution as the only possible means of changing society, then yes it is undesirable to make things better through non-revolutionary means, because it disarms the would-be-revolutionary class. This is why so many people on here unironically assert that you have to exacerbate existing crises or manufacture new crises to make workers' lives worse so that they "get off their ass and do revolution already." And that is logically consistent for their system where revolution is the only way.
> If the same problem can be tackled in different ways, and history shows that through evidence, then why cling to the thesis that it can only happen one way?
Because, they are either not willing to look at the historical examples you provided, or they seem them as irrelevant. 1789, 1848, 1917 are all they see. They don't see the much more common occurrences where modes of production change in a boring slow way over several centuries.

>>2836715
Engels in the Principles of Communism:

<Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?

<It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.

<But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all civilized countries has been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength.

Cutrone often says that even if every capitalist suddenly became a communist they couldn't bring it about. The workers have to do it. They're the ones in the mud, so to speak.

>>2837953
one of the the questions was
< Isn't it a bit teleological to insist that the capitalist mode of production must end in a specific way, i.e. through reform, through revolution, or through civil war, rather than a mixture of multiple ways? Especially in an age where nationalist nuclear armed sovereignty is asserted against ideal globalizing trends, and no international proletarian revolution seems imminent, even 143 years after Marx's death?

and the answer was
<let me quote something from 1847

i do not see how this answers the four questions, or even one of them really. it's just a quote that contains an assertion from 179 years ago.

if you are capable of thinking for yourself please give an answer that actually grapples with the question. marx allegedly draws his revolutionary theory from history itself, but we see history regularly contradict this. slavery was abolished through a variety of scenarios, some revolutionary, some reformist, some gradual transoformations. revolution was hardly the most common scenario. the same is true of serfdom. why is only revolution possible to abolish wage labor and capitalism? how do we know it will not be abolished through a variety of scenarios just like previous modes of production were. you are answering a "why" question by ignoring the question and quoting passages from long ago.

This should be a pretty easy question to answer, and it is one that would occur to anyone who thinks critically, which Marx and Engels were never against thinking critically, in fact they endorsed thinking critically. Ignore the passages and quotes for a moment and in the spirit of dialectical materialism actually treat this like a real puzzle to solve.

>>2837996
I think the main point where I think people clash is what revolution means. Some think of it is a single moment in time, some of it as a long and drawn out process. Whenever a mode of production gets supplemented by a new one, this is revolution. It's not necessarily violent, but the process that lead to it surely was.

>>2838017
well violence is the regular state of affairs even when no revolution is happening. as mark twain says of the french revolution, there were two reigns of terror, the feudal reign of terror lasted a thousand years, while the jacobin terror only lasted a short while. so the real question isn't whether revolution has to be violent, but whether it is actually how modes of production change. there were huge servile wars that rocked the roman empire but did not result in the end of slavery. the end of slavery and the start of serfdom was a much more boring process that was organic and non revolutionary. it was still violent, as always, just not revolutionary.

>>2838019
I mean I disagree that this slow and drawn out process wasn't revolutionary, but this is a small point and I agree with the general sentiment.

>>2838022
I think it wasn't revolutionary because it wasn't led by the slaves themselves. the transition to feudalism from slavery was led by local manorial estates that were gaining power and influence in the wake of the the collapse of the roman empire and the carving up of the latifundia.

>>2837996
You asked if communists think revolution is the only way, or if it would be bad if it happened peacefully, so I cited Engels who was open to the idea but thought it unlikely. I recall Marx had a similar opinion about America doing it through democracy, which comes off as rather optimistic nowadays. Modern capitalists haven't softened, they still want to claw back previous gains, even child labor, so it seems unlikely they'd enact socialism willingly in the foreseeable future, if they even could. What's in it for them?

I can relate 2 ideas of top down socialism I've heard about, but I don't think they're too popular. One was from the book Four Futures, which I didn't actually read, but the idea was we'd get robots that can replace most human labor, so the capitalists wipe out all the "useless eaters" and live off robots doing everything for them. Eventually old property relations don't make much sense so hey, they made socialism just for themselves.

Another idea was that the nationalists or military types would embrace socialism because they view it as the only way to stop the decline. After the revolutions in France and Russia they became much more powerful, so maybe at some point there could be some kind of officer corps revolution to rebuild America and reassert dominance. That wouldn't be the kind of socialism that most here would like, but maybe it could build the foundation for something better.

On the side of gradualism, there's market or finance socialism, that try to transfer control and ownership to workers or citizens, via sovereign wealth funds, something like the Meidner plan, employee funds/wage earner funds, community land trusts, limited-equity cooperatives, public banks, that sorta thing, but why would the capitalists let you get away with that? They killed Allende, they slaughtered the socialists in Indonesia, maybe they got Olof Palme. They still do stuff like picrel.

>>2838066
>pic
Sometimes it feels like barbarism already won and we're just living in the roll credits

>>2838066


maoists and anarchists plan in the usa is basically to fracture and dismantle it and then have different countries and federations within the dispersed land of the USA tell me how thats more realistic… than ya know, voting pro workers party and people fully controlled by labors rights into power? theres no reason to sacrifice people and have bodies pile up, its not the 1800s or early 1900s anymore if liberalism has evolved than why cant the communist revolutionary evolve? we are in less barbaric times.

>>2838108
>we are in less barbaric times.
Lmao. If this was even ten years ago people might have actually bitten this.

>>2838108
> we are in less barbaric times.
mmmmmmmmmmmm idk I'm looking at gaza right now

>>2838115
>>2838117

i meant domestically israel is a barbaric country israel is like if the US government in the 1807 had the military and technology scale of 2026. lol seriously go take a time machine to 1892, organize a strike and see what happens, then come back and do it in the same state today. my point is that communists were insurgents cause the conditions demanded it now, you idiots have even exhausted options a. b. and c. and you want to larp as people who got live AMMO used on them the moments they tried options a b and c. try a b and c succesfully first and stop being losers

>>2838121
Where do you think history is heading anon? What does our trajectory look like to you?
I have serious doubts that conditions will suddenly become favourable to the democratic path.
In the UK a bunch of people just got tried as terrorists for the first time ever for civil disobedience.

>>2838138

So whats the solution here, another george floyd but x100? politicians and bankers being chased into their bunkers instead of just sneakers being looted? is that the next step for you adventurists or? then what? whats next?

You're making important observations OP, but here are a few points off the top of my head that you should consider. First, the socialist revolution is really the only one in history that is actually being carried out by a class which is A) the majority, B) the most oppressed (third world peasants notwithstanding), and C) intractably opposed to the people they are rebelling against. The previous transformations in the mode of production weren't necessarily affected by the broad masses of working people, though of course they had a role in it. The transition from serfdom obviously required the agitation of the serfs in some places, but it did not overthrow feudalism and so can't really be called a revolution as such. The overthrow of both slavery and feudalism was spearheaded in most cases not by the peasants or enslaved, but by the emerging industrial bourgeoisie. This is a critical factor, because although the slavers and the aristocracy had obvious beef with capitalists, it wasn't really something that was existential for them. Planter or noble families could and did pretty easily buy their way into the bourgeoisie. The vast majority of the British aristocracy today owns capital assets, and their titles are mainly symbolic with little material distinction between them and any other capitalist. In the American South Black labourers went from being literal slaves to de facto slaves, still working the old plantations as sharecroppers or wage labourers. The biggest barriers to their integration weren't economic but social, since business and commerce were seen as uncouth and common during the early days of capitalism. This makes it much easier for a change in the mode of production to take place, since this isn't a life and death fight between oppressor and oppressed, but a dispute between oppressors over which means of exploitation will prevail. More importantly, it was possible to leave the declining aristocracy and enter the emerging bourgeoisie without much loss in power or wealth. Indeed, after a certain point buying into capitalism was essential if you didn't want to become impoverished nobility. Second, the industrial revolution made transitioning to a bourgeois political structure a matter of national survival. No state which failed to industrialize could hope to compete militarily and economically with those that did. The vast majority of societies that failed to do so were conquered and had such relations imposed on them. Modernization, such as in the case of Japan, became a matter of survival even for the feudal ruling class that would have its traditional way of life upended by it.

The first of these factors is simply absent under capitalism. There can be no permanent social peace between workers and capitalists, no amalgamation or compromise that preserves the power of both parties as in the case of the nobility and early capitalists. The bourgeoisie didn't so much destroy the aristocracy as absorbed it, but the workers cannot do this to the capitalists. Likewise, a top down transition is unlikely because it would mean class suicide for the capitalists in a way that simply didnt exist for the aristocracy. The only way left then is to fight for the prize, and somebody has to lose. Second, we have yet to see evidence that socialism provides the same immense advantages to the military and economic power of a state that industrialization did. Sure, we've never seen it implemented in a highly developed country, and it has proven capable of promoting rapid development in backwards countries. We could reasonably speculate that a socialist America for example would be virtually unstoppable. But at the moment the differences in power between capitalist and socialist countries appear to be differences of degree. Certainly nothing like the 19th century, where capitalist countries went into battle with Maxim guns, and feudal ones did so with swords (or muzzleloading guns if they were lucky).

This of course doesn't mean that socialism won't be built in different ways in different places, with different degrees of violence and rupture necessary. I'm sure there will be some countries that will transition to it peacefully, although this will probably only happen when much (if not most) of the world has gotten there already. I could imagine a holdout bourgeois state surrounded on all sides by socialist neighbours accepting the outcome of an election that brings communists to power, without any attempt to thwart them through violence simply because it would be futile by that point. But I still think that the transition to socialism will necessarily be more violent simply because the stakes are higher for everybody involved, and the costs of failing to modernize won't be as obvious or severe.

>>2838121
>>2838141
i want to clarify that this guy is not OP

>>2838173
Good reply, thank you.

>>2836715
I think Lenin on the Prussian path of agrarian development is relevant here.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/agrprogr/ch01s5.htm

I think it is entirely possible that the bourgeoisie may usher in communism for the bourgeoisie and then kill most of the proles. This would be bad.

I think the quickest and least painful path to socialism involves revolutionary struggle. I am opposed to a long and cruel path to socialism.