Karl marx said that there is no real change without blood and violence

[LeninistKing]

KARL MARX SAID THAT THERE IS NO REAL CHANGE WITHOUT BLOOD AND VIOLENCE


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/79_01_05.htm (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/79_01_05.htm)

No great movement has ever been inaugurated Without Bloodshed.

The independence of America was won by bloodshed, Napoleon captured France through a bloody process, and he was overthrown by the same means. Italy, England, Germany, and every other country gives proof of this, and as for assassination, it is not a new thing, I need scarcely say. Orsini tried to kill Napoleon; kings have killed more than anybody else; the Jesuits have killed; the Puritans killed at the time of Cromwell.

These deeds were all done or attempted before socialism was born. Every attempt, however, now made upon a royal or state individual is attributed to socialism. The socialists would regret very much the death of the German Emperor at the present time. He is very useful where he is; and Bismarck has done more for the cause than any other statesman, by driving things to extremes.


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[Weezer]

It's because the opposing force does not want to give up power.

If the proletariat are to take over the means of production, blood will be shed, sadly.

[ZeroNowhere]

Sure, that's pretty much a correct statement (Marx's, not your paraphrase) on history thus far, but what exactly are we to be discussing? He got his point across, that is, that accusing socialists of being guilty for all bloodshed and assassination is rather silly, as assassination and bloodshed didn't exactly wait for the socialists to show up. Is that the subject, or...?

[Invincible Summer]

You know how Glenn Beck (as well as his panelists) in his latest shitfuck of a "documentary" basically said that socialism/communism does not care for human life, and just sees human deaths as a means to an end?


Well, despite the truth that revolution will involve some bloodshed, to justify unnecessary blood and violence (sort of the feeling I'm getting from the OP) just adds more fuel for reactionaries like Glenn Beck.
Basically: yes, there will be blood, but we should try to minimize the amount of it, not just let a bunch of people die and go "Oh well, that's revolution!"

[Rousedruminations]

yeah minimizing is absolutely right ! but inevitably people will die ...

[Dimentio]

KARL MARX SAID THAT THERE IS NO REAL CHANGE WITHOUT BLOOD AND VIOLENCE


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/bio/media/marx/79_01_05.htm

No great movement has ever been inaugurated Without Bloodshed.

The independence of America was won by bloodshed, Napoleon captured France through a bloody process, and he was overthrown by the same means. Italy, England, Germany, and every other country gives proof of this, and as for assassination, it is not a new thing, I need scarcely say. Orsini tried to kill Napoleon; kings have killed more than anybody else; the Jesuits have killed; the Puritans killed at the time of Cromwell.

These deeds were all done or attempted before socialism was born. Every attempt, however, now made upon a royal or state individual is attributed to socialism. The socialists would regret very much the death of the German Emperor at the present time. He is very useful where he is; and Bismarck has done more for the cause than any other statesman, by driving things to extremes.


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Yes, organised groups tend to kill one another when their economic or political interests are threatened. But that doesn't say that we need to feed children to Moloch or kill people just because Marx said that such things as a change of system tend to be violent. The Red Khmers followed that philosophy and see where that led them.

A tool should always be of the right size compared to the problem. Preferably, people should not even be killed. If they are a threat against the popular will, incarcerate them until things have cooled down. We should avoid to give anyone the unchecked power over life and death.

[Blackice]

I don't think that someone who is mentally healthy, would like to see people dying. Yet, no class in power will reject resisting the attempts of proletariat to take over the power. So blood will be shed, inevitably and sadly.

[AK]

Well it's hardly like the Bourgeoisie are just gonna give up the means of production and go about their merry lives. They're greedy little shits they are. Violence is needed. But of course, kill as least as possible when the time comes.

[LeninistKing]

I am in favor of peace, i am a christian-socialist, however we have to be realists and very scientific. And if Karl Marx was a scientist, a genious, we should listen to his comment that no real change has happened without blood.

You don't see Karl Marx in The History Channel teaching people that no real changes has happened without blood, violence and assasinations. you know how the US media has brainwashed many progressives in the US left into rejecting violence and welcoming a non-violent Ghandi philosophy which really doesn't work at overthrowing fascism in this world.

Even some christian liberation theology priests advocate violence, like Franz Fannon

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It's because the opposing force does not want to give up power.

If the proletariat are to take over the means of production, blood will be shed, sadly.

[robbo203]

Marx ALSO said in a speech delivered September 8, 1872, in Amsterdam...

But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are
everywhere the same.

You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various
countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that
there are countries -- such as America, England, and if I were more
familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland --
where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means. This being
the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most countries on the
Continent the lever of our revolution must be force; it is force to
which we must someday appeal in order to erect the rule of labor.


Today the odds have shifted decisively in favour of the use of peaceful means. To advocate the use of violence is pointless and suicidal

[Bright Banana Beard]

Today the odds have shifted decisively in favour of the use of peaceful means. To advocate the use of violence is pointless and suicidal
False. Marx said they can have peaceful revolution in those three states, but he is not demanding it. So, can to point me out where the bourgeois peacefully give the workers all their power?

And yet, look at the end, the revolution will be made with force. Are you seriously delude? Please find me a quote where Marx directly said that he rejects violence COMPLETELY.

[robbo203]

False. Marx said they can have peaceful revolution in those three states, but he is not demanding it. So, can to point me out where the bourgeois peacefully give the workers all their power?

And yet, look at the end, the revolution will be made with force. Are you seriously delude? Please find me a quote where Marx directly said that he rejects violence COMPLETELY.


Engels in 1886 preface to Das Capital on Marx's view on peaceful revolution
Surely, at such a moment, the voice ought to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a “pro-slavery rebellion,” to this peaceful and legal revolution.


Also this....

Engels 1895
Introduction to Karl Marx’s
The Class Struggles in France 1848 to 1850

In France, where for more than a hundred years the ground has been undermined by one revolution after another, where there is not a single party which has not done its share in conspiracies, insurrections and all other revolutionary actions; in France, where, as a result, the government is by no means sure of the army and where the conditions for an insurrectionary coup de main are altogether far more favourable than in Germany — even in France the Socialists are realising more and more that no lasting victory is possible for them unless they first win over the great mass of the people, i.e. the peasants in this instance. Slow propaganda work and parliamentary activity are recognised here, too, as the immediate tasks of the party. ....

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionaries", the "overthrowers" — we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and overthrow. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves....


The franchise has been, in the words of the French Marxist programme, transformé de moyen de duperie qu'il a été jusquici en instrument d'emancipation — transformed by them from a means of deception, which it was before, into an instrument of emancipation.[458] (http://www.revleft.com/vb/l%20n458) And if universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to count our numbers every three years; that by the regularly established, unexpectedly rapid rise in our vote it increased in equal measure the workers’ certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents, and so became our best means of propaganda; that it accurately informed us of our own strength and that of all opposing parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion second to none for our actions, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness — if this had been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage, it would still have been much more than enough....

Does the reader now understand, why the ruling classes decidedly want to bring us to where the guns shoot and the sabers slash? Why they accuse us today of cowardice, because we do not betake ourselves without more ado into the street, where we are certain of defeat in advance? Why they so earnestly implore us to play for once the part of cannon fodder?
The gentlemen pour out their prayers and their challenges for nothing, for nothing at all. We are not so stupid. They might just as well demand from their enemy in the next war that he should take up his position in the line formation of old Fritz, or in the columns of whole divisions a la Wagram and Waterloo, and with the flintlock in his hands at that. If the conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for [with body and soul]. The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.

[Bright Banana Beard]

Engels in 1886 preface to Das Capital on Marx's view on peaceful revolution
Surely, at such a moment, the voice ought to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling classes to submit, without a “pro-slavery rebellion,” to this peaceful and legal revolution. Sadly, this is only referring to England.

In France, where for more than a hundred years the ground has been undermined by one revolution after another, where there is not a single party which has not done its share in conspiracies, insurrections and all other revolutionary actions; in France, where, as a result, the government is by no means sure of the army and where the conditions for an insurrectionary coup de main are altogether far more favourable than in Germany — even in France the Socialists are realising more and more that no lasting victory is possible for them unless they first win over the great mass of the people, i.e. the peasants in this instance. Slow propaganda work and parliamentary activity are recognised here, too, as the immediate tasks of the party. ....

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionaries", the "overthrowers" — we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and overthrow. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves....You also take it out of context, Engels added:Meanwhile they make new laws against overthrows. Again everything is turned upside down. These anti-overthrow fanatics of today, are they not themselves the overthrowers of yesterday? Have we perchance evoked the civil war of 1866? Have we driven the King of Hanover, the Elector of Hesse, and the Duke of Nassau from their hereditary lawful domains and annexed these hereditary domains? And these overthrowers of the German Confederation and three crowns by the grace of God complain of overthrow! Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes? [Who would suffer the Gracchi to complain of sedition?, Juvenal, Satire, 11.24] Who could allow the Bismarck worshippers to rail at overthrow?
Let them, nevertheless, put through their anti-overthrow bills, make them still worse, transform the whole penal law into india-rubber, they will gain nothing but fresh proof of their impotence. If they want to deal Social-Democracy a serious blow they will have to resort to quite other measures. They can cope with the Social-Democratic overthrow, which just now is doing so well by keeping the law, only by an overthrow on the part of the parties of Order, an overthrow which cannot live without breaking the law. Mr. Roessler, the Prussian bureaucrat, and Mr. von Boguslawski, the Prussian general, have shown them the only way perhaps still possible of getting at the workers, who simply refuse to let themselves be lured into street fighting. Breach of the constitution, dictatorship, return to absolutism, regis voluntas suprema lex ! [The King’s will is the supreme law!]. Therefore, take courage, gentlemen; here half measures will not do; here you must go the whole hog!


The franchise has been, in the words of the French Marxist programme, transformé de moyen de duperie qu'il a été jusquici en instrument d'emancipation — transformed by them from a means of deception, which it was before, into an instrument of emancipation.And if universal suffrage had offered no other advantage than that it allowed us to count our numbers every three years; that by the regularly established, unexpectedly rapid rise in our vote it increased in equal measure the workers’ certainty of victory and the dismay of their opponents, and so became our best means of propaganda; that it accurately informed us of our own strength and that of all opposing parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion second to none for our actions, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness — if this had been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage, it would still have been much more than enough....If you read more, he is referring the insurrection is simple ineffective.

Does the reader now understand, why the ruling classes decidedly want to bring us to where the guns shoot and the sabers slash? Why they accuse us today of cowardice, because we do not betake ourselves without more ado into the street, where we are certain of defeat in advance? Why they so earnestly implore us to play for once the part of cannon fodder?

The gentlemen pour out their prayers and their challenges for nothing, for nothing at all. We are not so stupid. They might just as well demand from their enemy in the next war that he should take up his position in the line formation of old Fritz, or in the columns of whole divisions a la Wagram and Waterloo, and with the flintlock in his hands at that. If the conditions have changed in the case of war between nations, this is no less true in the case of the class struggle. The time of surprise attacks, of revolutions carried through by small conscious minorities at the head of unconscious masses, is past. Where it is a question of a complete transformation of the social organization, the masses themselves must also be in it, must themselves already have grasped what is at stake, what they are going in for with body and soul.
The history of the last fifty years has taught us that. But in order that the masses may understand what is to be done, long, persistent work is required, and it is just this work which we are now pursuing, and with a success which drives the enemy to despair.

Re-read it yourself on Class Struggles in France, Engels introduced narrative on the book. I do not found one bit of quote where Engels said that violence must be rejected.

[robbo203]

Sadly, this is only referring to England.
.

Maybe. Although Marx also cited the example of America in his 1872 address (and possibly Holland). But, hells bells, this was 140 years ago! Why are we even discussing this? What Marx said was not holy script. He in fact argued that we need to relate this question to the conditions prevailing. Today it is utterly ludicrous to go about advocating violent revolution. There may or may not be some violence involved in the socialist revolution (although the state capitalist regimes of Eastern Europe were toppled virtually bloodlessly apart from Romania in which there were I think about 1500+ casualties if I remember correctly). But that is quite a different thing to actually advocating violent revolution as a strategy. It is an utterly stupid and, if I might say so, immature comicbook approach to revolution to actually advocate violence. It would be suicidal to take on the might of the state by military means in any case. 150 years ago this might just have been plausible. Today, there is no chance whatsoever. I personally think that terrrorism of any kind is an utterly reactionary approach to changing society. It plays right into the hands of the state. This is exactly what the state wants to cultivate to keep its grip on power - the enemy within.. I appreciate that the "armed struggle" brigade might not envisage their approach in quite the same light as an organised cell of terrorists planting bombs on trains that kill civilians but all the same...



You also take it out of context, Engels added:Meanwhile they make new laws against overthrows. Again everything is turned upside down. These anti-overthrow fanatics of today, are they not themselves the overthrowers of yesterday? Have we perchance evoked the civil war of 1866? Have we driven the King of Hanover, the Elector of Hesse, and the Duke of Nassau from their hereditary lawful domains and annexed these hereditary domains? And these overthrowers of the German Confederation and three crowns by the grace of God complain of overthrow! Quis tulerit Gracchos de seditione querentes? [Who would suffer the Gracchi to complain of sedition?, Juvenal, Satire, 11.24] Who could allow the Bismarck worshippers to rail at overthrow?
Let them, nevertheless, put through their anti-overthrow bills, make them still worse, transform the whole penal law into india-rubber, they will gain nothing but fresh proof of their impotence. If they want to deal Social-Democracy a serious blow they will have to resort to quite other measures. They can cope with the Social-Democratic overthrow, which just now is doing so well by keeping the law, only by an overthrow on the part of the parties of Order, an overthrow which cannot live without breaking the law. Mr. Roessler, the Prussian bureaucrat, and Mr. von Boguslawski, the Prussian general, have shown them the only way perhaps still possible of getting at the workers, who simply refuse to let themselves be lured into street fighting. Breach of the constitution, dictatorship, return to absolutism, regis voluntas suprema lex ! [The King’s will is the supreme law!]. Therefore, take courage, gentlemen; here half measures will not do; here you must go the whole hog!

If you read more, he is referring the insurrection is simple ineffective.

Re-read it yourself on Class Struggles in France, Engels introduced narrative on the book. I do not found one bit of quote where Engels said that violence must be rejected.

You are missing the point. Its not that he is saying violence must be rejected - although you can hardly deny he is saying we must try to avoid violence. Im not saying either that "violence miust rejected" . It may be necessary to use limited violence under certain circumstances and we must allow for that possibility. But that is not the point is it? The point is that you should fundamentally base your strategy on peaceful means and that you should not advocate violence as a means of bringing about a social revolution. To do so would be totally counter-productive and a recipe for authoriitarianism as well as the emergence a new ruling class if it were ever remotely possible for violence to succeed. There is one certain way to ensure that status quo remains firmly intact and that is to go about advocating its violent overthrow