this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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But he did write quite extensively on Lumpenproletariat.
That is quite a few groups he considered subhuman, where half the ‘cleansing’ operations under communism have derived their theoretical excuses from.
The point of the Lumpenproletariat isn't that they're subhuman, it's that they lack cohesiveness as a class or revolutionary potential.
Well - here’s the thing with “lacking revolutionary potential” and a dear-leader mindset.. anyone dear leader deems lacking is labeled lumpen and thrown to the furthest gulag or has their rights removed and confined.
Eg in Stalinist Russia certain groups like the Roma, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Koreans or homosexuals were labeled as such wholesale.
In modern times the Uighurs need reeducation etc.
Thing is, Marx didn't have a Dear Leader mindset. Far from it. He is, in fact, focused on broad, sweeping, materialist strokes, something that has not survived quite as well as the more general ideas he advocated. When Marx talks about lacking revolutionary potential, he simply means that they aren't going to be the instrumental class pushing the revolution forward. Peasants also lack revolutionary potential by Marx's analysis, but few Marxists, if any, would advocate murdering them en masse.
By contrast, Marxism-Leninism thinks peasants DO have revolutionary potential, but tends to kill them en masse.
First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.
But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.
That is, it doesn’t matter what he wrote or believed in his heart of hearts if it can be interpreted in such broad strokes as to allow the implementation of the dear leader mindset with his writings as a touchstone without fail.
And it doesn’t matter what he thought should be done with the lumpen elements if he thought of them as less than, disgusting, parasitical, and even objecting to the cause, (his writings certainly show disgust in my opinion) - true believers to the cause will see them (as they have) as obstacles and will do whatever needs to be done to remove them - as they have.
The difference between what he wrote and every communist regime that has existed, is the ones that existed all had Dear Leaders. He didn't call for that. So they straight up failed at the jump.
They attempt to approach communism as a flash, a sudden struggle for control and then all will be well. There needs to be groundwork laid, there needs to be a community will to push things in that direction. You cannot arrive at a true communist state through violent revolution. It will inevitably devolve into an authoritarian dictatorship. I feel like you have to progress through some levels of democracy and socialism to arrive at such a goal, and it must be done with the consent and agreement of most people.
It’s possible that what you say is true but Marx himself in poverty of philosophy thought you couldn’t arrive without it.
I guess my overall point is that Marx was a man of his time with similar failings and sensibilities of men of his time - amongst other things he was homophobic, he was considering people in groups wholesale in a way that’s rather distasteful, and in a way that allowed later supposed followers to use these writings to fuck over whole populations.
I’m not sure why people are rising up to whitewash these things - they don’t negate the other insights anymore than Newton’s insane occult obsession negates calculus or the theory of gravity.
I'm not trying to defend his character, nor every detail of his writings. You do not need to be absolutely beholden to a century old dead guy. Good place to start though. He did believe in revolution and I get it. I understand why and it doesn't seem wrong except we have the benefit of hindsight. Didn't work out so well the several times it was tried.
I was mostly arguing that he didn't want a dictator, it's just that, unfortunately, it seems his methods lead to that.
And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class, will you concede the point or would I be wasting my time?
what
I’m not sure what you had trouble grasping - I explained the thought in detail in the paragraph following.
I don’t see how making the same horrible comments about another whole class of people counteracts the horrible comment about others.
“Your honour, and if I show that my client stole from other shops, not just the one he is being prosecuted for, wouldn’t you concede that that negates the theft from this shop?”
I'd argue none of those were people's revolution, and in none of those cases did the people seize the means of production. All of those cases were vanguard parties claiming to act on behalf of the people, which I view as a wildly different thing than the people themselves.
I don't see those as communist because they immediately reject the Marxist notions of rule of the people. Vanguard parties are inherently not of the people, as I see it.
And again, I am stupid and uneducated, so you're probably gonna have to talk slow and avoid jargon for me to get it.
I mean while i agree with the premise of that argument this sounds a lot like ‘no true Scotsman’… which instances do you see as being in the true spirit then?
I'll jump in. European Democracies that are taking care of their people are the furthest along.
Because that's how you get to true communism.
The pitfalls on the path are the same that any democracy faces. Mostly authoritarians seizing power.
Vanguard parties are also a threat on the path to communism. Lenin participated in one election, and lost. So he seized power and created a new feudalist state, and then called it communism.
Prosperity through colonialism and imperialism is our greatest hope. \s
Post WW2 European Democracy. The colonialism mostly didn't survive the colonizer having all their cities firebombed, often repeatedly. Most of the stolen prosperity burned. Not that every European country actually took part in the Colonialism,
And even then, half of the continent was then ruled by a totalitarian dictator, and were themselves exploited as colonies of Moscow. And the ones that were free lived in somewhat constant fear of being invaded by their somewhat insane neighbor.
But the key is, the people who wrote the post WW2 constitutions, wrote in stuff that made them more solid democracies than had existed before, what with many of them still being monarchies prior to a pair of devastating wars.
Lessons have been learned about the mathematical structure of democracy.
I believe that the true key to communism is extreme democracy. Every man, woman, and yes, child, should have a voice in government, and that voice should matter. And yes, the European Democracies are closest to that goal. Especially with the creation of the EU.
Closest, but nowhere near there yet.
None? I dunno. Maybe it is a bit of the Scotsman fallacy or maybe I'm just too idealistic, but I don't have an on-hand example of a true people's revolution led only by the people yet. But I assume a lot of that is due to overwhelming power of capitalism and their incentive to immediately quell anything that resembles it, whether through violence, or compromise, or allures of wealth, more than the impractically of the thing happening.
I don't have all the answers here, and I think it seems there needs to be some kind of catalyst to unify the working class in such a massive way, and while I'm uncertain what that catalyst is I don't vibe with the "ends justify the means" approach of a vanguard that seems to me so antithetical to communal nature of my limited understanding of Marxism. I keep trying to understand it but it always comes back to me to a "they don't know what's best for them" mentality and then what's the fucking point, we're just trading one subjugator for another.