What is a reactionary exactly?

[Broletariat]

I've always been of the persuasion that a reactionary is, literally, someone who sees a situation and reacts immediately. EG a worker sees his/her job taken by a hispanic and reacts that hispanics are taking all the jobs without bothering to examine the underlying economic issues. But I've also been told a reactionary is one who wants a return to the "good ole days." Which is it, or is it both?

[Tablo]

A reactionary is a person that reacts against positive change. Like monarchists reacted against the creation of elections and such.

[Broletariat]

A reactionary is a person that reacts against positive change. Like monarchists reacted against the creation of elections and such.
Sounds better than the two definitions I proposed.

[automattick]

A reactionary may be defined as a person who believes that there once existed a mythical golden age in the past which was preferable to the present (or where things are tending). Thus for the Nazis it was 19th century Romantic Germany; for white, bourgeois Americans it was the 1950s.

[Muzk]

Reactionary
A political position that maintains a conservative response to change, including threats to social institutions and technological advances. Reaction is the reciprocal action to revolutionary movement. Reactionaries clamp down on the differences of the emerging productive forces in society, and attempt to remove those differences, silence them, or segregate them in order to keep the stability of the established order.
Examples of the political position of reactionaries can be seen throughout history: during the US Revolutionary War, the reactionaries were the ruling British aristocracy, who sought to maintain their feudal government over their American colonies, while the US revolutionaries sought to establish a government to represent the interests of capitalist values and practices. Hundreds of years later in Russia, the tables would turn and capitalists became reactionary while the Socialists are revolutionary.


Where there is revolutionary action, there is reaction. This reaction must, of course, by us revolutionaries be dealt with. It is a natural answer to any change we want to bring about.

[Comrade_Stalin]

A reactionary may be defined as a person who believes that there once existed a mythical golden age in the past which was preferable to the present (or where things are tending). Thus for the Nazis it was 19th century Romantic Germany; for white, bourgeois Americans it was the 1950s.

Then there are many reactionary people on this fourm as I have come cross many people who say we should move back to the past, to a time before goverment and money.

[AK]

Then there are many reactionary people on this fourm as I have come cross many people who say we should move back to the past, to a time before goverment and money.
Primmie bastards?

[Zanthorus]

He is a stalinist. He thinks communism is utopian.

[automattick]

Then there are many reactionary people on this fourm as I have come cross many people who say we should move back to the past, to a time before goverment and money.

Then they have entirely missed the point made by Marx and I feel sorry for them. As Alpha said, they are primitivists.

[Zanthorus]

Then they have entirely missed the point made by Marx and I feel sorry for them. As Alpha said, they are primitivists.

No, he means that he thinks that the abolition of the state and money is utopian. Have a look through the "State Capitalist Theories" thread in the Theory section.

[Comrade_Stalin]

No, he means that he thinks that the abolition of the state and money is utopian. Have a look through the "State Capitalist Theories" thread in the Theory section.


He is a stalinist. He thinks communism is utopian.

No, I think primitivists is utopian , and ius not real communism. And yes I think that it is primitivists to abolition of the goverment (not the state) and money.

[Nolan]

He is a sensible person. He thinks left communism is utopian.

fixed? Now now.

[Raúl Duke]

Communism, as a state of society, has no state,no accumulative capital ('money'), and an economy based on the saying "From Each According to their Abilities, To Each According to their Needs/Wants."

[Gegen den Staat]

"Reactionary comes from the French word réactionnaire, coined in the early 19th century. It was the first of the two words coined (the other being conservative, from the French word conservateur) for the opposition to the French Revolution."

There is your answer.

[death_by_semicolon]

A reactionary may be defined as a person who believes that there once existed a mythical golden age in the past which was preferable to the present (or where things are tending). Thus for the Nazis it was 19th century Romantic Germany; for white, bourgeois Americans it was the 1950s.

There also recently seems to be a great deal of nostalgia in the US for the 1920s. In particular (and inexplicably), the administrations of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover as conservative counterpoint to those of Wilson and FDR, both wicked progressives according to Beck-style reactionaries. Wilson was a totalitarian leftist who rounded up dissident US citizens (in ref to the Palmer raids, which actually targeted leftists, go fig). FDR, of course, traveled back in time to personally cause the Great Depression. No one can accuse these people of making any sense, but they're out there...

The sad thing is, it's mostly proletarians who are falling for it.

[ellipsis]

I have found that it is often used as a buzzword for revolutionaries; denouncing something as reactionary is often an easy way of attempting to discredit something without actually going into why a particular position is not revolutionary. In my understanding reactionary is the antithesis of revolutionary.

Why question is are "counter-revolutionary" and reactionary the same thing?

[Il Medico]

A reactionary is one who opposes progressive class struggle. Whether it be a monarchist of the era of bourgeois revolutions or a modern supporter of capitalism.

[Dimentio]

A reactionary may be defined as a person who believes that there once existed a mythical golden age in the past which was preferable to the present (or where things are tending). Thus for the Nazis it was 19th century Romantic Germany; for white, bourgeois Americans it was the 1950s.

Actually not in the case of the nazis. In their case, it was some sort of mythical golden age when the ancestors of the Germans had been three metre tall blonde giants living on a lost continent which lied where the North Pole lies today tens of thousands of years ago. :lol:

[automattick]

There also recently seems to be a great deal of nostalgia in the US for the 1920s. In particular (and inexplicably), the administrations of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover as conservative counterpoint to those of Wilson and FDR, both wicked progressives according to Beck-style reactionaries. Wilson was a totalitarian leftist who rounded up dissident US citizens (in ref to the Palmer raids, which actually targeted leftists, go fig). FDR, of course, traveled back in time to personally cause the Great Depression. No one can accuse these people of making any sense, but they're out there...

I totally agree. There are also Keynesian liberals who drool over FDR's reign as the un-stereotypical "strong liberal" who "all Americans loved" (meaning that he never addressed racial issues in America, but rather postponed them for later presidents to deal with). Your point was excellent and it definitely makes me think that really when it comes to looking for a model, we communists are alone in we look to the future, not to the past, as some egalitarian paradigm.

[Zanthorus]

fixed? Now now.

Sure, if by "sensible person" you mean social-democrat with a violence fetish.