78
(edit : my bad, the first post was deleted by mistake so i rewrote the title from memory, it was Suharto's resignation* in 1998, not death, following riots killing an estimated 1000 people. He died ten years later, in 2008.)
It is also the 74th anniversary of the founding of China's People's Republic today, not a coincidence(, just as, e.g., Russia's war in Ukraine happening on the same "anniversary" as the western-backed 2014 coup).
China was only allowed to exist in 1978 once they welcomed capitalism. Their overwhelming success wasn't expected however.
There is no double standard. We are for whatever aids the cause of the working class, whatever advances the cause of decolonization and anti-imperialism. We oppose those actions which harm the interests of the working class and which advance the imperialist agenda, and we support those which do the opposite.
You have to look not at the form (the superficial appearance) of events but at their essence. You have to analyze their class character and their function in the framework of the global class struggle. This is not hypocrisy, we are clear in where our allegiances and our agenda lies. A coup is just a tool that can be used to achieve either good or bad ends.
Liberals cannot understand this because to them form is everything. For the liberal all that matters is how something is done - as long as the method is deemed acceptable the outcome doesn't matter. But Marxists must always ask in whose interest something being is done, who does it benefit and what is the impact on the long term project of working class liberation.
I had three very good replies below my comment, thanks.
This is indeed what the west does : they shut up about authoritarians who are on our side(, i'm thinking about the political parties recently banned in Tunisia or Senegal while the west stays silent, but the examples are clearly legion, N.Chomsky famously proved that our medias exclusively focused on Cambodia while totally ignoring East Timor, because the Khmer were communists while Suharto was on our side, the difference in our media coverage was something like 1:1000 or more).
We(sterners) may claim that we believe in our universal values but we're not(, or at least there are priorities, and it's not as if these values of Justice/.. weren't shared by communists as well).
So, you're saying that having double standards is logical, and that pointing out western hypocrisy only serves to mark the difference between our speech and our actions ? Perhaps.
I'd still feel hypocritical if i criticised one of the horrors we did while supporting(, or even closing my eyes on,) our side if they did the exact same thing.
There's probably a middle-ground between both options, i'm biased until a certain point, the pro-capitalists probably are as well, at least the communist side doesn't need to lie in order to win the debate...
The key thing you are missing is critical support. If a group does one of the horrors that we criticize the west for doing, we criticize them for doing it too, regardless of if they generally are leftist or do things we appreciate. We don't unconditionally support anyone.
Coups for national self-determination are good. It is quite obvious when coups are made by the US because they instantly sell off their countries to western companies.
The difference is that communists don't pretend to be impartial or apply universal rules to all groups. We stand firmly on the side of the working class. Liberals pretend to be impartial and apply the same rules to everyone, but they obviously don't, and that's when they get called out.
The coup overthrowing Sukarno was bad because it led to a million man mass genocide and ethnic cleansing. What are you on?
No you absolute ghoul. The deaths of close to a million people matter to me a lot more then a country "losing socialism". But that genocide would not have happened if the COUP DID NOT OCCUR IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Also no, what is this enlightened centrism take? There is no biases and double standards.
You want to hear a good one? Nazis deserve bullets in their skulls, but communists do not. Is that a double standard?
Maybe that’s the problem, isn’t it? Situations require nuance and shades of grey.
“Violence is wrong” cannot be a universal rule, because there are situations even in a personal level where violence is morally defensible.
The Red Army killed a bunch of Nazis in WW2. Sorry, but I would uncritically support killing perpetrators of genocide. Doing this is not by any means committing a genocide, and I don’t understand how this isn’t common knowledge anymore.
Oh, ok, i understand now.
If murder was always wrong, then we would have to hang the hangman.
However, we could say that voluntarily murdering an innocent person is always wrong.
Seems like we're getting closer to a universal rule, but we can always get closer, yes.
Violence against violent people, in order to prevent more violence, seems justifiable. Yet whistleblowers are put in jail for, e.g., hacking computers in order to get the proof of one's misdeeds. And there's quite a lot of people responsible for a lot of sufferings who receive presidential honors, or other stuff as their advisors, one can't kill them though, things are indeed complicated, but saying violence is not an answer while passing a violent socio-economic law is bullshit yeah, in a real democracy we could at least vote to cancel such law.
In any case, we'll support manifestations in a country we don't like, but "condemn violence" when these manifestations happen in our streets, it's simpler for me to equate both situations and talk about a double standard.
But i could agree that street violence is less justified in a socialist country compared to a capitalist one. However, i've heard enough times people saying that violent manifestations are justified in an "authoritarian" country(, almost always socialist), but not in our "democratic" country.
There are indeed some cases in which violence is more acceptable than others, my personal bias is that it's justified in order to prevent capitalists from doing even more misdeeds, but, yeah, i'll loop over with the justification from the other side that violence is justified in order to prevent socialists from supposedly doing more misdeeds(, like helping the poors, having democracy at work, healthcare, more equal opportunities from birth, a collective goal, ... ?).
Some pro-capitalists are sincere when they talk about preventing the evils of socialism, so the best would perhaps be to create international unbiased rules that mistakenly consider that capitalism is as virtuous as socialism, even if that's not what i believe it'd probably be necessary in order to be united in diversity.
A real democracy would have constraints to prevent such a law from ever existing, and should it be a thing, even violent revolution is justifiable. This is in essence why communists cannot espouse a purely nonviolent standpoint, as much as we might like to. If there were any way around it, I would much prefer that, but state violence must unfortunately be met in kind.
Yeah, of course, violence is needed to stop violence, i'll probably always keep in mind the belief that debate is the best path, but that's not always a possibility.
I've been thinking for quite some time now on how to be united in diversity, because it's desirable and feasible, that's why i had to consider that both sides deserved the same rights/respects. In fact, i'm obviously biased, but that's where my (public )questioning on double standards came from, i'm thinking about a situation in which i'd try to be united in diversity even with fascists, with the hope of changing them by our examples, it just really sucks that we(sterners) are hurting so many people around the world instead of helping each other, that's all, thanks for the chat
Violence should be an option on the table sure. There is no institution that can maintain hegemony without conditions of violence existing.
Individual fascists being deprogrammed to abandon racial supremecy if you know them? If anyone wants to try that uphill battle to help their friend, i wouldn't say it is a wrong thing to do.
Fascists in groups want strife and conflict as a core part of their ideology. Fascist governments only survive scapegoating internal problems on minorities or foreign governments.
Communists want peace and harmony to all with a government that builds people, including minorities, to their best selves.
In the western left, we are not at the stage of class war where compromising with fascists is tactically advantageous. Working with them only confuses the workers we are trying to convert and makes horseshoe theory that neoliberals propose look accurate.
your doing a centrism about fucking genocide