I lean leftwards because I want more people to get the help, dignity and peace they need and deserve. Now I feel a wave of being told to “harden my heart” and I feel scared and isolated. I don’t have it in me to become a martyr and estrange myself from most people any further, I get nervous with the leftism I see so often expressed as wanting the bad people suffer, and that anything short of revolution is not just not good enough, but worse than doing nothing. And then I have constant guilt that I’m judging people more discriminated than me for how they express things; that my fears aren’t valid and expressions of privilege.
By now I’m feeling emotional burnout, I get annoyed by any respone that isn’t in-depth analysis because it just feels like watching the same responses happening over and over and never going anywhere.
Yes, revolution is certainly necessary, but if you live in the imperial core you can at your option take comfort for now that it probably will not come to where you are for quite some time. In that time countless acts of structural and actual violence are visited upon the working class all over the world by the bourgeoisie. I hope at the very least that when a revolution does occur or has occurred in your own country or elsewhere you will investigate before you speak and not rush to condemn it simply because it happens to be violent, as all successful revolutions will be to some extent. It is also almost certain that the scale of violence required for such a revolution is less by orders of magnitude than the scale of violence required to maintain and extend the capitalist world system.
Mark Twain’s “two reigns of terror” quote goes here.
violence
ok, I see the argument
cruelty
who the fuck is arguing that cruelty is necessary?
Why do you feel anxious about the purported necessity of violence?
The people murdered by imperialism and poverty don’t get to choose whether they like violence or not
Marxists would love a non-violent way to achieve lasting positive social change. Unfortunately every time they try it results in fascists taking over, killing them (and hundreds of thousands of Marxist adjacent people) and rolling back any positive changes made. Scary ‘authoritarian’ communism has a rationale which its supporters have came to after hard lessons.
There are obviously ways to organise your community and achieve positive changes there, but the system we exist in is rigged and such action can only go so far.
Ignore people if their only motivation is violence on their class enemy. They are terminally online or children or both.
I’m never going to be able to participate actively in a violent revolution. I could protect my family and loved ones with violence if necessary but I’m just not that person. Fortunately, there are people who can.
If you want to be able to help your comrades if and when the time should come, there is plenty need for non-combatants. If you live in a rural area, lean to farm. If you live in a city, learn first-aid!
Learn first aid, whether rural, urban, suburban.
Do you view socialism/communist society as a reward for people like heaven is to Christians? 'cause it’s not. It’s a social necessity. You don’t need to martyr yourself and no one in the actual-marxist movement is asking you to. Advancing the social dialectic is something that happens whether you want it to or not, so you might as well be pushing it in the better direction since there’s no other option.
There Is No Alternative To Marxism.
There Is No Alternative To Marxism
+1
violent revolution is assured not by a desire for violence inherent in the base but by the unyielding logic of capitalism–and the bourgeois-controlled superstructure dominated by that logic–ensuring that violent revolution will come to pass
the word ‘necessity’ proves itself lacking. its social connotations are inextricably tied up with desire (a red herring) while its scientific connotations address the configuration of outcome (the dialectic produces a resultant scenario, synthesis of the imminent and its contradiction, and this synthesis is a necessary completion of the triad)
a more direct word is probably “inevitability,” although that’s still hitting too wide; the inevitability of violence in the consequent period directly following collapse is not the inevitability of revolutionary violence, per se. barbarism is still the base case we must avoid.
so if we need something narrower, that describes only the problem of understanding revolutionary violence apart from the personal, it would be something like, “by destructively suppressing all avenues for peaceful revolution within capitalist societies, the capitalist system preconfigures violence as a guaranteed aspect of any revolution that may occur.”
this isn’t advice for hardening your heart, OP. you have zero personal obligation to engage the perceived social compulsion to pick up the knife and steel yourself, not least because that compulsion is not there.
the goal is not to become the violent revolution. the goal is not to desire it. at the level of the individual, the goal is to understand what is happening and why, to not be 100% blindsided when ‘it happens’. the goal is to stay alive. if staying alive for you means keeping your soft heart and aversion to the lurid expressions of frustration that evoke violence while they forget or gloss over or downright misunderstand the central concept, then that is a good thing and the thing you should do.
Those are good points. I tend to be pretty good at knowing what to expect, but bad at actually preparing for them, doing what is to be done. That’s something I could focus on when I begin getting organised
I highly recommend you to check out the first half of Pedro Ross’s book “How the worker parliaments saved the Cuban revolution”. It’s a very passionate retelling of the community organizing to help each other and confront the odds during a very dark and difficult time (the Periodo Especial, after the illegal and antidemocratic dissolution of the USSR).
I also recommend you to listen to The Stalin Eras series by ProlesPod, they have an episode where they detail recountings about food commissars during war-induced famine literally starving to death while being in charge of the food, because they understood that feeding the peasants who’d bring in next year’s harvest was more important than feeding themselves.
However: It’s also very relevant that there’s (rightfully) a propagandistic effort by communists such as myself not to outright promote violence for violence’s sake, but to showcase that peaceful idealism is definitely abused by the ruling classes and injected into leftism. I hate violence, but I hate even more that we live in an eternal spiral of it, and that the movements that tried to distance themselves from taking arms (see Allende) ended up crushed and on the receiving end of much worse violence.
Socialist history is chuck full of acts of selfless love. Hexbear is a bit irony-poisoned and that works differently on different people, I personally enjoy it, it fosters a very direct and confrontational atmosphere where ruthless criticism is often welcome (I agree we may be too much sometimes)
I think the majority opinion on the site has long been the idealist position that sadism toward reactionaries is cool and good, which is simply backwards, but that needs to be separated conceptually for the inarguable necessity for violence to establish socialism because the masters of society, the owning class, will on the whole not simply surrender their power. If socialism could be established peacefully, that would be better, but either way torture, punitive execution (rather than the wartime necessity of killing actual threats to the revolution) and so on do not advance socialism.
Regardless of how one feels about the people who are openly licking their chops about Doing the Thing, history shows us that the Thing is still going to have to be Done. I think that how people process that knowledge is a matter of their own psychology, and I think a very common survival response to the looming threat of violence is to lean into it. I also think there’s a normalizing social value to having a bunch of people clacking their teeth and banging their forks and knives on the table whenever an oligarch is around.
At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.
– Che Guevara
I mean, the necessity for violence is a purely structural issue that will have different qualities in different contexts. Its really important to have a concrete basis for revolutionary change, and my ignorance will lead to some speculation and back of the napkin googling. So please have some patience and take this as examples not as concrete basis for action.
Like, in the Netherlands, you live in a social democracy, 16% trade union membership. Based on the level of organization of the workers and relative social safety of your working class, the particular quality of resistance will more likely take the form of strikes,worker organization and demands than “Molotovs”. You were turned into a leftist by your own experiences, you are a reflection of your environment. Revolution isn’t a bloody coup but a transformation of social relations of production.
On the other hand, the Netherlands is the beneficiary of economic partnerships with South Africa which defeated legitimate apartheid but still bears the hallmarks of severe racial exploitation. As long as your social democracy exists as a function of neo colonial exploitation, as social democracies most often do, socialist transformation of your country is impossible. Likely, violent militant and nonviolent political resistance will be necessary in South Africa, and as closely combined as the two economies are, the working class of the Netherlands will have to function as part of the global working class, in solidarity with workers who are most heavily exploited, in order to achieve that transformation.
This is a question of worker consciousness, which is 1:1 with the question of vanguard/worker leadership. When discussing consciousness, we have to think about it as a structural phenomenon rather than a set of personal opinions, as it is often framed.
I catch shit from more politically and militant minded comrades all the time, because my approach is largely pedagogical. I think that self-development, which is itself a form of revolutionary change, can be uncomfortable. It often does not mean finding a group that tells you that all your opinions are valid, it does not mean being part of a collective that you never criticize and who never criticizes you. What gives us optimism and the feeling of accomplishment is engaging directly in the work of class struggle. If you’re engaging mostly with memes and takes, then you’re probably prioritizing the wrong groups. In my own practical work, most of my heavy book and theory study gets consumed by reading dozens of long political position, tactics and strategy papers per month, and long form responding to them, discussing, and disseminating the highlights. I still like memes and takes for entertainment value, but I also know a lot of comrades who kinda hate that shit and discourage it over practical discussion and engagement.
So from my perspective, I think many of your attitudes bear the hallmarks of leftism and practical mindedness. You might have to mix up your routine somewhat and take on some more IRL organizing work to feel a sense of connection to the struggle, and doing so might be just what you need to feel more connected to revolutionary transformation of society.
The easy part is realizing that some people need to be liquidated for the sake of the revolution. The hard part is realizing “some people” includes other comrades. That’s the real “harden your heart” moment.
If you read accounts of past revolutionary action, once it reaches past a certain point of intensity, the assumption is that any captured revolutionary has cracked under torture and squealed, making them a traitor to the movement and since the sentence for treachery is death, all captured revolutionary subsequently released will face liquidation regardless of whether they actually cracked under torture or not.
Except thats literally not what happened in Russian or chinese revs
before the fighting started (pre october rev and pre long march) captured comrades were helped to escape and go undergroun and/or into exile. During the civil wars, captured comrades were usually brutally murderes by reactionaries and people were happy if they survived somehow, helped them recover, and sent them.back to work.
I dont know as much about the internal processes and procedures the cpc followed, but the bolsheviks did full investigations for suspected traitors not just kill on suspicion.
Cuba’s an even bigger demonstration of how misguided your view is. Even enemy troops were treated well and often recruited! Fidel stressed this “niceness” as the unique element thats made cuba so strong and popular
i don’t see any value in posting this comment, here, as a response to what OP talks about struggling with in the top post. jumping beyond the issue of necking the fascist to go ‘you think that’s bad wait till you gotta ice your comrades after the fact for the cause of the future’, you are basically leaning on him to commit to a regressive and brutal interpretation of the party line in the specific moment that the demand will cause him to break a different commitment to his own sense of self that you have no business interfering with, here, in casual forum discourse.
pick better weapons and aim them at better targets
The whole fallout with PSL makes me think people aren’t taking it seriously enough. In the Civil Rights movement, you couldn’t even participate in those peaceful marches without first writing your will. The idea was that forcing you to write your will was a reality check on top of your very probable death be handled as smoothly as possible. That’s how serious they took it. This wasn’t the BPP or Malcolm X. This was MLK Jr style marches that online revolutionary larpers think they’re too good for.
In general, I think it’s better to understand your limitations and do what you’re personally capable of than to do something incompetently and be a burden towards other when you inevitably fail. And there’s a massive chasm between not doing anything and committing revolutionary suicide by joining an underground org. It doesn’t make you a failure if participating in a bake sale that funnels money to socialist orgs is the extend of your praxis. You are still doing praxis even if your praxis is just, “I’ll take care of my friend’s pets while my friend is in jail for protesting against ICE.” From each according to their abilities to each according to their needs.
I do not know the circumstances of OP’s life to make recommendations on what to do. I believe someone should be given information concerning the risks and costs of every potential decision. There’s a tremendous cost to becoming a revolutionary, but there’s also costs with doing nothing vs joining a mass org vs joining a union and so on. Trying to sugarcoat what a revolutionary entails does a great disservice to OP and OP’s potential comrades who expect him to perform his assigned tasks.
I do not know the circumstances of OP’s life to make recommendations on what to do. I believe someone should be given information concerning the risks and costs of every potential decision. There’s a tremendous cost to becoming a revolutionary, but there’s also costs with doing nothing vs joining a mass org vs joining a union and so on. Trying to sugarcoat what a revolutionary entails does a great disservice to OP and OP’s potential comrades who expect him to perform his assigned tasks.
if you do not know OP to make recommendations, then the only material you can go on to make an informed guess as to their relative intent to ‘become a revolutionary’ is the post we are all responding to, right?
where in OPs post does he say he is struggling with his feelings about necessary violence as a means to the end of becoming or not becoming a revolutionary? at what point in OPs post does he signal to you that the proper reference frame for his concerns is a confrontation with the execution of war prisoners for the prefigured crime of treason? he’s sad that we have to fight them, for fucks sake. i do not have any patience for this degree of tactlessness. we are not in the cadre educating the cadets, comrade. my former line stands, i want a damn bullhorn
PICK BETTER WEAPONS, AIM THEM AT BETTER TARGETS
if you do not know OP to make recommendations, then the only material you can go on to make an informed guess as to their relative intent to ‘become a revolutionary’ is the post we are all responding to, right?
I’m not sure why his intent is relevant tbh. Nowhere in my comments have I criticized nor condemned nor insulted OP. I barely made it personal at all. “Are you mentally prepared about what it takes to be a revolutionary” is hardly some ego-destroying question.
PICK BETTER WEAPONS, AIM THEM AT BETTER TARGETS
This could apply to you at well lmao
I mean, it’s not a comfortable thought, but realistic. I could be that comrade. You could be. May as well get used to the idea.
Are you doing organizing work irl? Your descriptions sound like lots of interactions with terminally online people.
It’s indeed my issue with online spaces specifically. I do want to join an organisation, but I struggle with maintaining daily life as it is. Perfectionism is also making me procrastinate while I bicker about the right org, opsec etc.
Upside is that I now live (mostly) away from my parents in a university city.
One of the things you’re probably running into is that short form text is a low resolution way to communicate and when folks get used to that they become poor communicators. In addition because there is no education program for participation at different levels, there is no ability to efficiently communicate assuming a shared baseline understanding. The closest equivalent to the latter here is like memes about struggle sessions, jokes, etc. But it’s also probably why you prefer longer format posts and explanations. I think some of the ideas, like revolution being necessary, or expressions of frustration and direct opposition to our enemies’ violence without qualms, comes from them having developed a very specific understanding of the world that disagrees with yours, but there isn’t a longer explanation to build a shared base between you. And online culture and attempts to “police” spaces by going hard on people, plus how difficult it is to tell when someone is eternally curious versus criticizing in a way that’s inappropriate, leads to toxic interactions that have no chance at building consciousness, only alienating others.
All of this doesn’t happen every time but it’s pretty common.
irl organizing is good because of the work and development for both the individual and the org, but also because irl communication has to work differently than this and can be grounding. Plus a proper socialist org will have a required education program where questions and disagreements are welcomed so long as they aren’t fully derailing all the time.
@purpleworm@hexbear.net’s suggestion is good but even just a principled reading group can be a good start. In Europe, where correct organizations (communist parties) are usually banned, you’d need to find organizations that differentiate themselves enough to avoid the ban. I’m suggesting this particular direction because it will directly go into some of your questions about revolution and violence, which ultimately are about reading a lot of history.
Perfectionism is also making me procrastinate while I bicker about the right org, opsec etc.
My suggestion here is that you try to nail down the opsec question and then just join an org that seems okay (and not like some abusive cult or chauvinist shitshow) because you can just leave and the experience will help inform you to find a better one.
I was talking with someone on here this week about how the Nicaraguan revolution very explicitly tried to limit violence and executions, and mandated a max prison sentence (for any crime) of 30 years. And they based this on their Christian faith, and what they believed to be the most faithful interpretation of this.
Contrast this to online left spaces, and principally western online spaces, which have a lot of people whose politics looks like posting (self-crit to myself here too). The impotency of the western left, combined with the counter-insurgent nature of the Internet in general, I think breeds extreme opinions, even if they’re “in jest”. I definitely feel those ways myself sometimes, but I think the only real solution is engaging with people physically, directly, and in common cause. The internet is corrosive and is designed to be, and I think we have to develop habits and discipline to combat this in ourselves. Which ultimately necessitates logging off.
anything short of revolution is not just not good enough, but worse than doing nothing.
This bothers me often on this site. The gleeful sneering at anyone attempting to enact any immediate and material positive change in the imperial core and beyond. So fucking happy with their own cleverness for noticing every contradiction or compromise. Anything short of an army large enough to topple the richest countries in the world organizing itself in an empty field like a flash mob, with no cultural change preceding the formation of this grand army because that would be an incrementalism, is a pathetic waste of time and anyone with any hope of a slightly better world for the marginalized within the core is an imbecile to be mocked.
the golden rule of being better than everyone: doing nothing > imperfection
Socdemism is structurally an impediment to the benefit of people even in the imperial core. It’s easy to use “making perfect the enemy of the good” language when speaking in generalities, but fundamentally there is no addressing capitalism by contenting ourselves with the election of socdem politicians.
I find it extremely convenient that the only productive action that the majority here recognize is “community building”. But not in any established orgs, because theyre either socdems like the DSA or proletariat-bourgeois like the teamsters or filled with sex pests or otherwise problematic leadership like insert western org with “communist” in their name here. Which at best leaves community volunteer work or forming unions from scratch, and at worst just means informally hanging out with like-minded people. I’m not shitting on volunteering, but I don’t think wearing a hammer and sickle pin to the food bank or turning the local coffee shop into a coop is going to move the needle when it comes to winning the hearts and minds of the western proletariat. So much here is wallowing disguised as realpolitik.
Feel like a lot of ppl here basically sort all progressive/nominally progressive forces (whether its parties, other groups, states or even just individuals) into 2 categories, first is the approved Real Socialists and Anti-Imperialists who need to be supported no matter what and cant ever be critizised too harshly and who can only fail cuz of outside interference (sometimes the outside interference is implied to come from extremely marginal forces that clearly dont have that kind of power to influence things), and then if its not one of those then everything they do needs to be scrutinized to the max, every mistake brought up anytime theyre discussed, everyone who does support them vocally is a naive idiot, etc
(Were not naming any names on purpose, were only saying this is how some ppl act, not which groups or ppl ppl think belong in either category)
