Originally posted by
[email protected] 27 2006, 02:30 PM
Why would communists (internationalists) defend NATIONAL revolts?
because some regions are still living in the pre-capitalist muck, fully dependent on the parasite nation(s).
every nation deserves some form of autonomy.. it is only after that point -- acute independence -- that we can reasonably discuss the economic alternatives.
in that sense, i'd support the development of sovereign capitalist relations in africa, but only insofar as they're temporarily progressive.
Okay. So now we have a justification to kill people.
i am close to several women that have been raped.
i would kill their rapists without hesitation.
sorry, human life is not sacred. it's simply precious.. it's valuable. and it's valuable in most situations, in most people.. but not in all situations, and certainly not in all people.
Okay. So now we have justification to kill groups of people. All we now need is an argument as to why "Group A" must be killed off.
a reasonable "why" has been presented above.
the right to life is circumstantial, and is bound to be taken away at any given moment. people are granted this right the second they are born. they can be assholes, pricks, ****s, dummies, mean, abnoxious, or simply disagreeable.. that wouldn't take away their right to life. being rude is simply a part of our existence.. we learn to deal with such people, and we either suck it up or insult them. fine.
yet, not all offenses are limited to ****-behavior.
hitler was a prick, sure.. but that wasn't the qualification that deserved a bullet.
I reject the analogy.
yeah, i know. you reject it on illegitimate grounds. to you, self-defense is a commodity, an item that's defined and used conveniently.
in many ways, it's not capitalism itself that kills people. people kill people, and i'll say just that.
the inevitable economic relations, however, create so many desperate situations, so many violent and disagreeable options, so many opportunities to kill and rape and steal and remain dumb and ignorant, that many people are bound to do these things.. all in accordance with their natural, encouraging environment. it's not difficult to understand that people respond to their environments, and they respond proportionally.
and, these monolithic structures, these situations-as-ideas, as hypothetical entities that we discuss and use in experiments, are simply the abstract expressions of people and power. in that way, we're rebelling against not only these expressions, these modes of thought, but also against the guardians of these expressions and these struggles.
sadly, these guardians are not stones or buckets, but people.
and it is self-defense against people, and people's opportunism, that i support.
i don't merely limit it rape, to murder; self-defense is broad, and far, and applicable to many situations, and to many different ideas.
when you insult an arrogant and/or offensive person, that's self-defense; your ego locks and hones into his unpleasantness, and reacts naturally, decisively.
hence, the rape analogy. it's not so much the act that i'm comparing capitalism to rape, but the logical process itself, as well as the natural conclusions of such arrangements, is comparable. when i make such analogies, i'm criticizing the form, the structure, of such institutions, not necessarily equating one unique, qualitative act with another.
comparison is not equation.
Are contemporary fascists responsible for the Holocaust? Your reasoning here says "no." But the almost paranoia regarding fascism by many of the writers on this board suggest very few would agree. I fail to see why that should be different with respect to communism.
perhaps you'd like to show me a post that indicates fascists born after the holocaust are responsible for the holocaust?
Now, I have no reason to believe that you personally would support gulaga, the tyranny which has accompanied the victory of communism.
you were careful in your other post, noting a precise difference between the communism of say, whoever, and the communism that we might welcome.
but, today, i see a change.. namely, the assumption that is some kind of victory for communism.
I simply wondered why, if it all was a perversion, an incorrect application of socialism, what is it about socialism that allows many of its advocates to interpret it so?
where could i even begin to answer this question?
do you not see [i]any difference between lenin and myself, an avowed yet circumstantial anarchist?
do you not see any difference between a party-led dictatorial economy, and an economy with equal participation by all sectors of society?
you're asking "what allows" us to do this or to do that, but i don't see how any of one of us are accountable for anyone else, as we're all people with different interests, different agendas, who just happen to fall all under one over-reaching, structural ideology.
your question of "what allows us" has a simple answer: difference.
there's nothing about socialism that allows us to criticize this or that.. there's only an ideology, which happens to be socialism, that we study and apply according to our metaphysical whims and preferences. naturally, since our premises are oftentimes so similar, we therefore come to similar conclusions, through similar logic, and similar processes. but...
i'm not him, and he's not you, and you're not it.
Bear in mind, I do not believe "Stalinism" to have been a perversion. I believe it to be the logical application of socialism, indeed the only way it can be rationally executed.
oh, you got that right. i believe the same thing.
the difference, however, is in the small, yet visible, nuances.. the very nuances that have shaped my outlook almost from the very start.
i pointed to these subtleties in my previous post, but, to be more specific, they relate to power, and our natural relationship to it. a revolution borne of elite professionals, a state-led economy with no public participation, a general lack of confidence, a region without even a reasonable shred of capitalist relations.. these create the situations and the natural outlets for tyranny, for an eventual (if not immediate) demise into authoritarianism, into a kind of state-socialism that has no real difference between it and the capitalism it claims to abhor.
sure, we have plenty of those "professional revolutionaries" in the world, and all throughout history..
but, i'm not accountable for them.
That was sort of my question. Along with the question as to why 20th century communists, following the writings of Marx, were so easily seduced into their tyrannical ways.
the "party." the "vanguard." the lack of attention to immediate economic conditions. lenin. his followers (i.e., everybody). authority. superstition. opportunism. the inability to compete with a more popular arrangement. capitalist intervention. et cetera.
the list is fairly large, and it's not only limited to my objections to leninism.