After the Class War

[GivePeaceAChance]

I was told that this site was full of crazies and psychopaths and that everyone would respond negatively to this but I just couldn't help but try to get a response.

I've always been reading pieces about armed struggle and the class war but it feels pointlessly vague on some regards and very specific on others and it worries me in some regards.
Though I've been spit on by them and ignored by others, I just don't want anything truly heinous to happen to most of the rich following the revolution (IF it even comes anytime soon). I guess it's more like a "what happens if the cool kids face a beatdowns the bullies and jocks get what's coming to them" on a more serious scale.
What I was trying to say is that I agree with the suppression of the bourgeoisie- but what exactly would that mean? I never get a straight answer. Because I never got an answer I asked someone at an Occupy rally and he must've said the wrong thing because he said "That means we're gonna hang the rich on stakes."
"All of them?"
"Every last one of them, man woman and child."
And that kind of concerned me because I don't agree with wanton murder for the reason of social origin. I just don't want people exploiting others for their own gain like parasites and I don't think everyone who's rich is like that. I'm not saying that an uber rich valley girl is a proletarian (a guy on another site called her "lumpenbourgeoisie", someone who isn't themselves an owner of the means of production but benefits from those who do and is thus also a part of the exploitation of the working class). I'm just saying I don't want needless genocide.
Making a rich person live a little tougher without all of their old privileges isn't 'repression' to me: if anything, that's a good thing (again, the original response is "if that's the case, then I don't think the rich think that making the poor have to either live up to impossible standards or be crushed by society for life is 'repression' either so this is debatable). But sending them all to gulags is something I won't stand for. And besides where does it stop? "Everyone related to a rich person goes to a camp?" I may have been homeless but I have a distant relative who was well off (never met them). Do I get oppressed then? What about a rich person who supports revolution- for whatever reason mind you- and is perfectly okay with a socialist or marxist order? I've seen some who say kill them too. I'm just shocked and surprised that a movement dedicated to equality is still hooked on inequality and just like the capitalists tries justifying it.

Reiterating, I don't mind and indeed call for the repression of the bourgeoisie if said repression means "making their businesses worker owned and preventing counter revolution and making them live like their underlings" because that's what everything would be like. When the ex-proletariat begins to improve their lot, so does the ex-bourgeoisie. We're all exes and we're all one. But when you go start screaming "Kill them all" I just have to say "Fuck you" and when you say we should terrorize people because they were related to the bourgeoisie I won't stand with your cause. I'll support the revolution and the wholesale destruction of capitalism but definitely NOT "revolutionary terror."
Whatever the poor wants to do with hated individuals is their own thing. When it becomes any and everyone amongst that group and its sanctioned by the state there's a problem.
So someone please educate me in this since I'm new to online leftism. Tell me in detail all these terms and meanings. If this is supposed to be some sort of general stance everyone's supposed to take then I guess I'm just not a leftist. But I don't understand how I couldn't be and it would sound bizarre calling myself a conservative since I rarely agree with conservatives on anything sans Bill of Rights.

I've decided to not wait around for a response and just openly state it-that's what this thread is talking about the most because I've always wondered about how the rich would live after a revolution. Not the capitalist old guy running a corporation and making war rich but the rich in general.
Being perfectly and clearly honest here although I'm a New Ager and believe that violence shouldn't be the answer, a good reason why I'm so interested in this topic has to be two things
1 I recently picked up this book called "Former People" that talks about how the nobles in Russia were treated after the Bolshies took over and
2 I actually have a well off friend (I'm not well off but I'm not begging her for money) who is also into this kind of stuff too (met at an Occupy rally and was surprised at how far left learning she is and how far she wants to go but I had to tell her that the revolution wasn't for her or her class and I guess that kind of discouraged her)
So that interpersonal concern is what drives me. I found Revleft and looked around and saw some stuff about what would happen to the capitalists after the revolution, but I didn't see all that much about the rich in general. And the book I mentioned wasn't that much more forgiving OR descript. I don't know trying to look at my good friend as 'swine' or as a 'parasite' because of her social birth just doesn't feel right.
I shrugged at the rhetoric at first because I know a lot of groups do such smearing, but that guy at the rally threw me off.
So now I'm here looking for some answers or reassurement. I never joined this side (figuratively I mean, I think I was always left-leaning) just to think that at some future point I'd have to take a rifle and kill my friend because of who she is.
And another response was just as harrowing


Considering that I and my mother are different races and she took me in and got a little flak for it, if I suddenly had to shoot her because of her race- despite all that she had done for me, raising me since I was little child- because some extremists don't like her based on her race, I wouldn't do it either. I'd rather shoot myself. There's no reason to do something like that because of where or to whom they were born and I'm like you in that I definitely don't agree in a discriminatory practice based on it. But communism and socialism and Marxism and Maoism are pro-working class. The working class tends to be poor. By pandering to the poor who have to put up with the bullcrap of the rich, you're gonna see some people who think like that naturally, and you're gonna see some extremists who want to take it too far.


For whatever it's worth, the "shock" value of my radicalism has subsided over time. Although I don't think I was ever foolish enough to make such a statement as above (about the kill every man, woman, and child lunacy), there was a time when I was certainly less empathetic (on a simply human level). That is to say, whatever empathy I had was essentially solely reserved for the proletariat. The problem with that sort of outlook is that it doesn't create any differentiation between the individual and the class. This simply isn't the way the world is though, and this is made clear by the fact that there are plenty of capitalists who really "try" to be good people, who really think that their doing positive things, who really think they are necessary. Equally, there are plenty of proletarians who hold some very destructive ideas and views with respect to what they think would be good for society.
I'm more flabbergasted as to how people can be so willing to take the lives of strangers without ever meeting any of these people or giving them a chance. The concept of wiping a group out because they're all supposed to be evil disgusts me. It's one reason I was never a big fan of action movies or kids shows because it's always portrayed as an 'us vs them' mentality with no one from either side supposed to consider the other. Even if you're evil being evil for the sake of being evil doesn't make sense unless you're a jerk and most people just aren't like that.

To that's my question then: after the class war, what are your thoughts on the fate of not only the fallen classes and the capitalists but also this "lumpenbourgeoisie", aka and i.e. the "rich" people in general.
And don't just lecture me on why I'm wrong about it all, I'm already well aware that there are those who will die a thousand deaths before parting with their billions or allowing the starving masses of Earth a drop more of water than they already begrudgingly allow them to have and those who are so old and set in their ways that they're superior that even showing them the repercussions of capitalism wouldn't change their minds. But then I think of my friend, I'd even say my good friend, and the concept that some would have me kill her and her family because of her corporatist father and tried to justify it with 'proletarian justice' regardless of what she had actually done herself but instead of to whom she was born and knows damn well the consequences of capitalism and why it must go. And it's this kind of persona that I wonder about post-revolution events. It's not stopping me from supporting the overthrow of capitalism, just rather concerned about what could happen.

[The Idler]

It would not be like the French Terror or the Khmer Rouge. The only people on revleft proposing those scenarios are those who played too much CoD and in the real world are Colonel Blimp type 'socialists'.

Anyway, I think 'revolution' needn't imply violence, nor 'dictatorship of the proletariat' imply secret police etc. or anything but a society exclusively in the interest of the (formerly existing) working-class. These terms may have come to acquire these meanings in the 20th Century.

There is a related interesting passage from 'Role-Modeling Socialist Behavior' by Karla Rab

A Controversy in the WSP
A man named Lou Fein applied for membership that March. Although in general agreement with WSP principles, he stated a few things differently. He said, for one thing, that when the socialist revolution occurs, it will not be a victory for the working class — because at that point, there
will no longer be a working class, socialism being a classless society. Anne Rab, Secretary of the Local, understood his point: “The revolution,” she agreed, “will be accomplished by a vast majority of socialists, among whom will be capitalists. And if you must picture it as a pitched battle, the opposition will be a minority of dolts, among whom will be workers. It will not be class that divides the ranks, but ideas. Because of the overwhelming numerical strength of the working class, my guess is that they will constitute the majority in both factions.”
A second point on which Fein criticized the party’s Principles was in their insistence that the only way socialism can be achieved is through political action. “It is quite possible,” he said, “that the WSP might be outlawed as a political party in the future. That would mean, by the ordinary definition of the term, that political activity had ceased. So what! The job of the WSP would not change at all; that job being to make socialists. Education for socialism goes on with or without an organization in the form of a political party.”
A third issue had to do with trade unions. On his application for membership, he wrote: “The socialist movement has one function only; to make socialists. If a union provides a suitable place to spread socialism, let’s use it, but I think that a socialist organization should not concern itself with trade unionism, but should concern itself with being hostile to present trade unions as active supporters of capitalism.”
In later discussion, Anne Rab agreed with this and added further, “I see that a trend of capitalism generally is toward better working conditions and higher standards of living. Why? For one thing, capitalist production itself no longer requires the more obvious and ruthless methods once employed so generally; and also, the organization of workers into unions is a factor. I would never deny the important role of the second, but we shouldn’t minimize the first.”
The problem was that many WSP comrades in the Thirties and Forties were active unionists: Ralph Roberts and “Chubi” Kligman were both organizers for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union (ILGWU); Frank Marquart worked as Educational Director for different United Auto Workers’ locals; many other comrades were very involved in their unions. Anne was accused by George Gloss, speaking for the NAC, of failing to recognize “that we are a working-class organization ourselves, and that we are part of the working class. This fact, in itself, compels the socialist movement to support the struggles of our fellow workers to the extent that we do.”
During discussion, Lou Fein, Anne Rab, Henry Muse, and many other comrades and strong sympathizers expressed the idea that “the organization of socialists into a political party for the abolition of classes does not represent the interests of the workers as a class. Socialists are united by a common bond of understanding, not class.” A majority of the WSP, however, contended that such statements are non-socialist because the struggle for socialism is primarily a working-class problem. “If we have capitalists in the Party, it is only because they have risen above their class interests and come over to the party of the working class.” Lou Fein’s application was rejected, but the controversy within Boston Local continued for months.
Rab had often made the point that the criteria for membership were simply understanding that capitalism can never operate in the interest of society as a whole, no matter how it is “reformed,” and that socialism represents a viable alternative to capitalism in which the interest of society is identical to that of each individual. However, Rab was out of town for most of the time “the Anne Rab controversy” raged in Boston. There were strong feelings on both sides of the discussion. At one point, Anne blurted, “I agree with Lou Fein, and if you think he shouldn’t be a member, maybe I shouldn’t be either!”
Anne was an official speaker for the Party, and the Secretary of the Local. She thought that her defense of the Fein application would persuade others to change their minds about it. But the strategy backfired, and Anne was dropped from the Party rolls in late June, along with Henry
Muse (who had been the circulation manager of the Western Socialist). Rab — still away on his organizing tour — and Sam Orner, in New Jersey, both sent telegrams to the NAC in Boston, urging that they not take any action rashly — but it was too late.
Throughout her life, Anne consistently defended the case for socialism even though she had been hounded out of the only organization that held to that case. In the course of time, ironically, the Party’s position came to look very much like her analysis of trade unions. As the labor movement in the U.S. slid steadily downhill, newer members of the WSP did not trouble to hide an openly critical attitude towards unions and their politics. By the time that happened, though, Anne Rab had lost
interest in being a member.

[GivePeaceAChance]

I guess it's just a tad difficult to say 'it will be this and not this' though because I'm sure a lot of socialists and leftists in Russia August 1917 thought the exact same thing that there would be no random bloodshed. Let alone that bloodshed winding up escaping anti-bourgeois and becoming anyone suspect to the regime. I know Lenin wasn't all that much more forgiving (since forgiveness would be more expensive than Midas's gold after an anti-capitalist revolution) but I think that violence to break counter-revolutionary capitalists and fascists is enough. As I know I annoyingly keep reiterating I won't stand for violence against pro-revolutionary bourgeois.
For that matter, for anyone pro-revolution and working class I'm against violence towards them. I'd actually hold a sizable amount of respect for those that break their own system (by their own will mind you) and reject their class in the name of popular revolt and global change, but I just hope that these elements remember that this isn't their revolution.
Or am I wrong about that as well? Is the revolution for anyone who wants to end capitalism and establish worker's sovereignty and solidarity, like my aforementioned friend?
I'm just so rooted in despisation of oppression that any form of it comes across as unnecessary unless there's a mighty good reason for it. The rich man who's giving hundreds of millions to warlords, dictators, and sadists to butcher their population and starve revolution just so he can smoke a $100 bill in Monaco with his elite friends is the kind of person for whom I hold no sympathy. Calling for his destruction is one thing because he presents a clear and present danger to the welfare of the working class and the poor.
But if his son grows up under him and holds up his nose to his practice and chooses to overthrow the system that allows his father to butcher the revolutionaries (rather than just saying "We should find something more humane but still 'allowing liberty to flourish'"), well knows who most deserves the best in this new society and gives his respect to the working class, and yet you still call for his destruction, then you yourself no longer have my sympathy. While most I've met aren't this way, there are still some who are and they're the ones who either are, as the above person said, speak as if all they do is play violent video games all day, or are the ones who know how to construct words in a manner to convince you they're right. They're usually known as 'clinical psychopaths' and they work well at what they do.

I'm sorry if I sound rather beggy, curious in the bizarre and random or apologist about anything wrong, but there are so many questions with revolutionary leftism that I've found out- after a lot of searching- are merely unanswered, undwelled and usually only discussed by those who are proponents of it, and the fate of the general rich is one of them.
I think this should be moved to Learning.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

The purpose of socialism is the self emancipation of the working class. Under socialism there will no longer be social classes. The means of production will be socially owned. Our lives will no longer be determined by the need of a small number of families to make a profit off our labor.

The rich, the owners of capital, will be expropriated. How this plays out will greatly vary depending on how the revolution plays out.

I actually do not know anyone on the radical left who advocates the mass execution of the wealthy.On the other hand few revolutionary socialists are pacifists.A social transformation obviously be resisted. Revolutions are civil wars and civil wars are always the most bloody form of war. In revolutionary situations most of the violence comes from the reaction.

Every time socialism has been attempted-Germany 1919-23, Russia 1917, Spain, China, elsewhere, its been viciously attacked.Much of the history of the soviet union can only be understood in this context.

If the Whites had taken Petrograd I have no doubt they would have exterminated the working class to erase the memory that the class had taken power. Likewise the visciousness of the Nazi assault on Leningrad-fascism wanted to utterly destroy the historical memory that there had been a workers state.

This is what socialism is up against. Context is everything.

Its also important to understand how horrifically violent capitalism is, how much violence is exerted and has been exerted by ruling classes to keep themselves in power.

Just a sampling...

India-mass famines created by British agricultural "reforms" caused recurring famines in Bengal and elsewhere, killing millions.

Guatamela..US imperialism turned the country into a virtual charnel house, killing 100s of thousands.

Vietnam...I believe the death toll from French and US imperialism is about 1.5 million. If I'm wrong someone could correct me.

We have Haiti, virtual slave labor and horrific sweatshops in China, the nightmare Western powers created in Congo, a million dead in Iraq.

So before one has moral agonies over how socialists will teat the rich "after the revolution" well, look at how the rich are treating us right now.Not to seak of how capitalism is destroying the planet...apology of which is fully paid for by the massively wealthy Koch brothers.

[BIXX]

Oppressors will die. If they continue to oppress us, they will die. I however see no problem with letting them live and having really amazing lives if they no longer oppress anyone or even better, join our struggle. Why would we kill an ally?

Basically, anyone who tries to stop us from attaining freedom can expect violence to be brought against them.

[GivePeaceAChance]

The purpose of socialism is the self emancipation of the working class. Under socialism there will no longer be social classes. The means of production will be socially owned. Our lives will no longer be determined by the need of a small number of families to make a profit off our labor.

The rich, the owners of capital, will be expropriated. How this plays out will greatly vary depending on how the revolution plays out.

I actually do not know anyone on the radical left who advocates the mass execution of the wealthy.On the other hand few revolutionary socialists are pacifists.A social transformation obviously be resisted. Revolutions are civil wars and civil wars are always the most bloody form of war. In revolutionary situations most of the violence comes from the reaction.

Every time socialism has been attempted-Germany 1919-23, Russia 1917, Spain, China, elsewhere, its been viciously attacked.Much of the history of the soviet union can only be understood in this context.

If the Whites had taken Petrograd I have no doubt they would have exterminated the working class to erase the memory that the class had taken power. Likewise the visciousness of the Nazi assault on Leningrad-fascism wanted to utterly destroy the historical memory that there had been a workers state.

This is what socialism is up against. Context is everything.

Its also important to understand how horrifically violent capitalism is, how much violence is exerted and has been exerted by ruling classes to keep themselves in power.

Just a sampling...

India-mass famines created by British agricultural "reforms" caused recurring famines in Bengal and elsewhere, killing millions.

Guatamela..US imperialism turned the country into a virtual charnel house, killing 100s of thousands.

Vietnam...I believe the death toll from French and US imperialism is about 1.5 million. If I'm wrong someone could correct me.

We have Haiti, virtual slave labor and horrific sweatshops in China, the nightmare Western powers created in Congo, a million dead in Iraq.

So before one has moral agonies over how socialists will teat the rich "after the revolution" well, look at how the rich are treating us right now.Not to seak of how capitalism is destroying the planet...apology of which is fully paid for by the massively wealthy Koch brothers.

Since you so perfectly answered my post beforehand, I suppose my only moral agony will be how the socialists treat people like my friend. I'm well aware of the atrocities committed by capitalists and fascists as well as how they try to justify them and controls us with doublethink into thinking it was for democracy. I'm very well sure that those people will face what's coming to them. Black Sabbath said it right, they'll beg for mercy, and Satan, laughing, will spread his wings. I just hope we don't take the whole Christian mindset seriously though because it was Christianity that I think helped the most to keep the working class pacified since Christians, anytime you talk about anything further than one generation ahead or "inevitable" like to say that Jesus will come before then. Hasn't yet, never will I say.
I don't want to say I'm agonizing over anything but the thought that some people are going to adopt a kill them all justification. I'm sorry I haven't named her, I just feel that it's a bit personal with this and what that other man mentioned about him and his different-race mother still gets me. I guess I just can't get with that kind of mindset though, even though as a former student of psychology I fully understand that literally everyone grown up in the Western-bourgeois environment are predisposed to think similarly, ala nurture.


I was also curious. After the revolution, where would technology lie on the proletariat's priorities? I'd imagine that bourgeois technophilia would be pretty low on the list.

[Taters]

I was told that this site was full of crazies and psychopaths

They're not wrong.


"That means we're gonna hang the rich on stakes."
"All of them?"
"Every last one of them, man woman and child."

hmmm


I recently picked up this book called "Former People" that talks about how the nobles in Russia were treated after the Bolshies took over

Those poor, poor nobles

[Crabbensmasher]

Of course nobody wants to 'kill the rich' simply because they are associated with being rich. No rational person would want that to happen.

A revolution is about transferring wealth, to empower the workers who've previously had no say. I suppose in some alternate universe, this process can go smoothly without bloodshed.
In practice however, things get complicated. Many of the rich would be unwilling to forfeit their slice of the pie. Think of a king being asked to step down from his throne after he builds an empire from rubble? Of course he wouldn't give in, he would resist. Once these people have had power, they cannot bear the thought of losing it. And so, they resist violently, leading to their deaths. History has shown us time and again, the powers that be will do whatever is necessary in order to stay in their position.
They would rather die than lose their place at the top of the foodchain. It is not our fault for this.

It's not that we want to kill anyone. Of course we don't. It's just very very likely that bloodshed is inevitable.

I don't know, that's the way I see it at least

[Fourth Internationalist]

To that's my question then: after the class war, what are your thoughts on the fate of not only the fallen classes and the capitalists but also this "lumpenbourgeoisie", aka and i.e. the "rich" people in general.
Assimilation into the rest of the working class.



But then I think of my friend, I'd even say my good friend, and the concept that some would have me kill her and her family because of her corporatist father and tried to justify it with 'proletarian justice' regardless of what she had actually done herself but instead of to whom she was born and knows damn well the consequences of capitalism and why it must go. And it's this kind of persona that I wonder about post-revolution events. It's not stopping me from supporting the overthrow of capitalism, just rather concerned about what could happen.Why would someone kill her for what her father did, when she didn't do anything? As far as I'm aware, Marxists are materialists and don't believe in this almost religious idea that children are guilty for their father's crime, or are to punished for it. That's Biblical punishment that Marxists (most of whom are atheists) don't support at all.