Do you really want any authority to have the power to kill anyone in peacetime? Then you're leaving the door open for bloody tyranny, as removed from a classless society as the Earth is from the Moon.
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Is there any moral reason we should not kill?
The following is merely a reoccurring thought; I am in no way condoning taking anyone's life:
I have generally always considered myself a pacifist but the more I begin to think about the revolution and a society with nary a god but ourselves, I begin to ask myself, "in accordance with what moral standard should our enemies be spared?" If we are strong and our opposition weak, by what right do they oppose us? Is there any reason whatsoever that anti-socialists and reactionaries should be suffered to live?
In the past I have long been of the belief that such people should be reeducated, but speaking of those who cannot or will not capitulate to a future belonging only to the productive, is there some moral standard by which their lives hold value? Aside from my repulsion to killing, which is merely a condition of my exporsure to society, is there anything whatsoever that should cause me concern for the lives of our opposition?
Do you really want any authority to have the power to kill anyone in peacetime? Then you're leaving the door open for bloody tyranny, as removed from a classless society as the Earth is from the Moon.
I think there is a problem with just saying "kill", kill what? kill for food? we kill plants and and animals everyday, do you mean kill humans? Like kill as in the death penalty for punishment? kill for revenge? kill for profit? kill for love? kill as in war? kill as in random or sporadic attack? kill for pleasure?
Those are all different things
I am merely trying to critically examine my own morality. With the realization that there is no "big other", and an understanding that all of our morals are merely symptoms of societal conditioning, I am wondering by what right or standard should we value the lives of those who oppose us and our movement. And to take it even further, by what right or standard should we value anything?
What I want is only important if I have the power to make it happen. And if I want one thing and you want another, who wins? The one who remains. The only rights that truly exist are the ones that exist by power. My question is simply not a question of desire. Desires are merely conditions brought on by genetics and reaction to stimuli.
Yeah, yeah, "might is right." We've all heard it before, from Stirner, Machiavelli, Redbeard, et al.
You may not have the power now, but you are participating in a discussion and a movement that might at some point influence, at least indirectly, persons who will have the power, not excluding yourself.
The thing with power is that like all things in this world, it is limited by space and time, and circumstances are prone to change. Some will gain power; some will lose it.
It is therefore useful to speak in subjunctives.
My subjunctive is that I would not want to live in a world where people were arbitrarily killed with official sanction.
Perhaps, you don't care about the lives of counterrevolutionaries, but remember that it's power to kill that is being discussed, and power can almost always be abused. Today it's a counterrevolutionary; tomorrow it's the personal enemy of some high-ranking party official; or a Jew, or a Gypsy, or a gay person.
You're quite right that one needs not worry of some supernatural gods or angels or extraterrestrials descending from the heavens to punish them for crimes against humanity. When they're punished, it's by their own kind.
I take it that even if you believe that might is right, you do not believe that might should always remain in the hands of those who already have it, such as the bourgeoisie. Otherwise, why are you a communist?
In the words of the bourgeois Friedrich Engels, "But what is true in his [Stirner's] principle, we too must accept. And what is true is that before we can be active in any cause we must make it our own, egoistic cause—and that in this sense, quite aside from any material expectations, we are communists in virtue of our egoism, that out of egoism we want to be human beings and not merely individuals.”
Now that's a useful reply.
My own perception of (and desire for) social justice is the reason I am a communist. It bothers my brain to live in a world where the unproductive leech off the productive, forcing them through a rigged system to do work for their own selfish enrichment. I am not an individualist, nor a pure anarchist, yet I can still recognize that as human beings we are all driven by our own unique conditions. And I can understand your point about power being abused, but my point is simply: what is abuse? Who determines this? I myself determine it, and I myself fight. And as communists and workers we have only to ask ourselves a very simple question: who can oppose us? Because I simply see no reason outside of petty human sentiment why the lives of our enemies should be spared if we ourselves deem them obsolete.
What standards does a wolf use to decide if it should kill or not?
If an authority comes to power with popular support and goes on to misuse the power entrusted to it by the people -- using it for purposes contrary to the ones it was entrusted for -- there's the abuse.
Granted, the people should always know better than to allow any authority to acquire more power than is necessary.
The real problem is who you mean by "us." A vanguard party, the socialist movement, the proletariat, the nation, human kind itself.
If it's the first or second option of the ones listed above, then I see where your outgroup derogation is coming from.
There has been a tendency in almost all revolutionary groups to betray the principle of proletarian self-emancipation for substitutionism, or at least to excuse the substitution of other forces for that class: Red Army tanks, Maoist guerrillas, Central Committees, radicalized students, "sympathetic"/"progressive" nationalist leaders, etc.
Let me ask you this: which of the persecutions orchestrated by the Bolsheviks do you disapprove of?
I would like to believe our standards are above those of wild beasts.
What's it like to believe in god?
so the two options here are to believe in god or to believe humans are wolves?
lmao
Sous les paves, la merde!
No, believing that we have some moral imperative to be better than animals, or that we are anything other than animals requires believing in a god or gods. We are a moral equivalent to wolves in that there is no morality.
Hmm, unless you subscribe to determinism doesn't morality have to be part of your choice? For example even if you say that the point of being against private property isn't because of some moral arguments like being unfair or theft but because of the real impact it has on society etc, in the end it implies a choice, a reason, and that one has to be moral no?
Not a morality coming from god, but from what you think, and naturally what you think isn't divorced from the rest of the world but as part of it, influenced by it and influencing it, I mean, in the end there has to be a conscious choice by society to uphold certain values and make certain choices (even when free from dogma) and the reason ultimately has to be moral, how can it not be? Or is that ethical? I get confused to be honest
Sorry I can't explain it better.
Last edited by Full Metal Bolshevik; 22nd September 2016 at 06:23.
isn't this just the old subjective vs objective morality argument? that the world needs to have some kind of religious book shat out of the anus of the great winged dragon lizard? the answer to the argument being that there is no such thing as objective morality, and that everything including murder was not wrong because nobody ever agreed on what counts as murder, or something?
It's irrelevant to me whether morality is object or subjective. That's sophistry, metaphysical ravings, which are to the real world what masturbation is to sex. It's quite simply that some of us choose to have higher standards than those of wild beasts, encourage others to do the same, and prefer to associate with those who do the same.
Take two groups of people. In one, the people are considerate, cooperative and quick to offer acts of kindness. In the other, each is for their own, or worse, they're at each other's throats, and see no reason why they shouldn't kill each other. Which group, you think, will do better?
The group that quickly realizes it doesn't need to follow one of your strict categories and realizes brutality when brutality is needed makes sense.
Which btw, was my original point about wolves.
That's a third group. And how it would compare, performance-wise, is up for debate.
You would probably concede that of the two, the cooperative group would fare better.
I argue that of the three, the consistently cooperative group would still fare the best, the reason being that as long as no one else ever exerts brutality, then retaliation is meaningless. There's nothing to retaliate against.
Of course, the real world is no sketch book, there is no absolute certainty in anything, no "consistently cooperative" groups, or guarantees against betrayal; there are times when one has to fight fire with fire. But we must remember what our ideal is. I'm not saying, "Let's kill them with our kindness." Yeah, absolutely, let's be cute little vegan bunnies, but let's be cute little vegan bunnies armed to the teeth! so that when the wolves ambush our part of the forest, they will be offered but three options: convert, flee or die.
Theoretically, if you could make all firearms disappear from the world forever, it would be worth it, because the only important reason why anyone needs a gun is to protect themselves -- and there's no need to protect yourself when there's nothing to protect yourself from. A completely gunless society would be great for its members -- until it was overrun by another, armed society. Non-violence is a marvelous thing, as long as everyone abides by it; if some do and some don't, then the the ones who do are leaving themselves vulnerable. If one group of countries is restricting its greenhouse emissions while another one doesn't, then the former is at risk of competitive disadvantage. Capitalism is a global system. That's why internationalism is integral. That's why we chant, "Workers of the world, unite!"
Last edited by Fellow_Human; 22nd September 2016 at 13:35.
but your argument presupposes that the real world is indeed a sketch book.
"Speaking in subjunctives." It's useful sometimes. There are ideals whose feasibility hasn't ripened, which doesn't mean that the way for them shouldn't be being paved.
You want us to be a pack of wolves; I want us to be a colony of armed rabbits. It's not in the rabbit to be a predator; for it to be neither predator nor prey, let's arm it. Aggressiveness shouldn't be cultivated as a part of our inner nature, of our normal behavior, or an end in itself, but only employed as a tool in moments of necessity, proportionately, when faced with belligerence.
You obviously don't know much about wolves or rabbits. They both do what I'm talking about. Be brutal when they need to be. I don't want "us" to be anything, I'm just saying that I think the standards for killing exhibited by wolves or rabbits or bears or anything make more sense from a strategic standpoint than any moral code has come up with as of yet.
