The Swedish activist Greta Thunberg has been detained by Israel and reportedly maltreated by her Israeli captors after she was kidnapped, along with hundreds of other activists, from Gaza’s territorial waters on Friday.
Communism operates under what was referred to by Marx as a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which we regard as complete liberation of the working class, because it allows the public to have control which is simply not possible under the liberal framework of “personal liberty for all”. Under the liberal framework, even the smallest most democratic intervention is decried as “government overreach”; that is, if it is even made democratically possible in the first place.
Which isn’t totally incorrect, because what you’re talking about isn’t “personal liberty for all”. You exclude billionaires. Us socialists/communists exclude capitalists as a whole, because the sole interest of a capitalist is to enrich themselves at the direct expense of the working class and our liberty. Billionaires are certainly the worst and most visible offenders, but a materialist lens allows one to see that each and every capitalist serves interests that are fundamentally in conflict with those of the working class. To operate any other way would be to betray their own interests, and wouldn’t make for a very effective result.
Liberation will only come when the working class has the power to decide collectively how our resources will be used, which will only come when we have majority control over the means of production, which will eventually lead to the capitalist class becoming completely obsolete. Liberation means being able to provide for our needs above anything else; for the sake of our humanity alone, and from the work that we are already doing; rather than our labor power being extracted for private gains and our needs provided only to the extent that it serves capitalists’ profit motives.
Why is that? Have you ever spent time thinking about how that would be any more or less possible under the current system than, say, seizing the wealth of billionaires and socializing it back to the working class? How would the latter ever be possible by any means short of revolution, especially now if Trump gets his way? What will you do when the ruling class doesn’t put that kind of relief on the table? How much oppression and destruction will you consent to, if you believe liberation is not possible and things can only get worse from here?
If you don’t believe in it, you won’t fight for it. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. That’s exactly why our system does everything in its power; both to obscure revolutionary working class history, and to inflate the state’s ability to repress dissent. So I’ll repeat this until the day I die: it’s been done before under worse circumstances.
Russians and Cubans were under brutal dictatorship. Haitians were completely enslaved by one of the most powerful colonial forces in their time. Vietnamese guerillas successfully fought off invasion by the single most militaristic nation in the world, and they aren’t alone in having done so (see North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, so on). If I could speculate, I’d say China’s political and economic situation in 1950 is a pretty reasonable outcome for the direction we’re heading now in the US. Regardless of how you feel about what came after each of these struggles, the factual reality is that these weren’t armies sponsored by any state. These were working class people fighting directly against the states that profited from their exploitation.
All of those people got organized and won liberation from their domestic oppressors, doing their part to weaken the empire, despite what would seem as insurmountable odds to a disorganized worker. It’s on us now to organize ourselves against our own oppressors, to get them off both our backs and theirs, and we can’t do that without maintaining optimism about our ability to win should we fight. We know that Fascism can only exist for so long until it cannibalizes itself. As a collective we are capable of beating it long before that comes to pass. If we allow the state to beat that optimism out of us then we are only greatly delaying our liberation and doing the ultimate disservice to our people.
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.” - Ursula K. Le Guin
I hear you and I don’t want to diminish your hope because I do think the younger generation sees the benefit of it. I just think you’d have to convince the right it’s a good idea
I don’t think we should waste our time trying to convince fascists of anything (most of whom are the wealthy elites we outnumber anyways), other than by carrying out the consequences of their actions. Their interests are simply not aligned with ours.
That’s okay though, because threshold number of people required to disrupt the system and make real change is much smaller than you would think. All it takes is coordination between those of us that believe in upholding the dignity of the working class, and we gain that coordination by organizing and spreading class consciousness.
The thing is that most of the everyday people in the US already agree with us. Even Republican voters. Most people believe that housing, food, and healthcare should be affordable; that there should be real solutions to homelessness and crime; even bodily autonomy (pro-choice, gender affirming care) is popular among the people. It’s just that neither party puts up real solutions, both of them make excuses for why those things are not possible, and the Republicans are really good at making up scapegoats and creating non-solutions that sound really good to someone already conditioned to accept them, which the Democrats generally play along with and split the difference rather than putting up any real challenge or counter-argument.
As for the aesthetics of socialism, even Castro eventually had to spell out that it was, in fact, socialism that was responsible for all the gains they had made since their revolution - that the bogeymen they were so afraid of were simply projections made by their former oppressors. Working class consciousness doesn’t have to be 100% before anything can ever happen. It can grow as a result of our success after the fact.
Excerpt from Fidel Castro's Speech on Marxism-Leninism
Formation of the ORI
These forces were called upon to unite in a single organization, and we organized the ORI. It was not easy, it was also a lengthy process; but, in the end, we organized the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations.
Sectarian attitudes are gradually disappearing; so are the attitudes of exclusivism. In the same way, people are no longer being excluded because they are socialists, and, consequently, sectarianism and similar attitudes are disappearing. Some attitudes of extremism are also disappearing. Extremism, which is often called “the measles,” should, of course, not be confused with revolutionary firmness. Extremism is another manifestation of the petit bourgeois spirit in the revolutionary movement which we must fight against just as we have to fight against sectarianism.
There are many things our people have already had time to learn. They have had time to get rid of some of the prejudices that many people had who depicted socialism as something terrible something inhuman, something harsh, something enslaving, which is exactly all that imperialism is and which it accuses socialism of being.
Well, we are in a socialist regime. How different is this socialist regime from everything that had been said about socialism So much so that even those who have had problems, like the reactionary clergy, who have had problems with the Revolution, can’t blame the socialists for them, can’t say the socialists tried to close the churches, prohibit and persecute religious ideas. On the contrary, Aware that religious sentiment is a part of the feelings of some people, revolutionary power must respect the religious sentiment of that part of the people. It does respect it, and gives it every facility. It was those who waged war on the revolutionary regime who said that they would be deprived of parental authority over their children. And the people have learned the truth. Who were they who took away parental rights? Saboteurs who murdered young men and women, counter-revolutionary criminals who murdered a 16-year-old teacher and deprive his mother forever of parental rights, of affection, of warmth and the hope of having her son at home again.
Not only did they murder him; they tortured him. Why did they torture him? Did they torture him, as the Batista secret police used to do, to force a secret from a revolutionary? No, they did not torture him to get any secrets out of him. They tortured him because they were sadists, because of their love of torture, because that boy was there teaching. What secret could he have had? Thus, it was not to squeeze out any secrets. They stabbed him fourteen times. They stabbed him simply to torture him, to fill him with anguish, to make him suffer, to sow terror in the hearts of all mothers. We found out that what robbed people of their parental rights was exploitative - capitalism, which dragged peasant girls away from the countryside to put them to work as servants, to force them into a life of prostitution. We found out that it was capitalism that condemned the daughters of workers and the daughters of peasants to that fate. And it turns out to be precisely socialism that wipes out illiteracy, that educates a million Cubans, that makes plans to rehabilitate prostitutes, to teach typing and shorthand to domestics, to wipe out unemployment, to bring teachers to the remotest corner of the country, to fight and die defending the country from the claws of imperialism, to bring hospitals, to bring roads, to organize social activities, to organize children’s activities, to organize youth activities, to develop culture and to struggle for the happiness of the people. That is what we have given our people.
Socialism behaves very generously toward its enemies – too generously. The social system which captured over a thousand mercenary traitors – paid by and serving the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon, and who came here escorted by foreign ships – the system that captured 500 counter-revolutionaries – among whom were many murderers who had already committed blatant crimes against the peasants – without even applying the maximum penalty on them, the social system that sees with anguish its calm and generous attitude repaid by the cowardly and vile murder of a 16-year-old youth – that is socialism.
In other words, with all its power, socialism does not abuse it. It is calm. It is conscientious. It struggles to overcome all its defects. It struggles to overcome-extremism, sectarianism, abuses, injustices, simply because it is socialism, simply because it is what Marx and Engels conceived of, what Lenin and all the revolutionaries fought for – a better life for man, a happier life for the people, a freer life for the people, that replaces the regime of class oppression, the regime of an exploiting class over the workers, with a workers’ democracy. In Marxist terms, this is known as the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. (applause).
So there’s no liberty under communism? I’d say class freedom is extreme liberty
Communism operates under what was referred to by Marx as a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, which we regard as complete liberation of the working class, because it allows the public to have control which is simply not possible under the liberal framework of “personal liberty for all”. Under the liberal framework, even the smallest most democratic intervention is decried as “government overreach”; that is, if it is even made democratically possible in the first place.
Which isn’t totally incorrect, because what you’re talking about isn’t “personal liberty for all”. You exclude billionaires. Us socialists/communists exclude capitalists as a whole, because the sole interest of a capitalist is to enrich themselves at the direct expense of the working class and our liberty. Billionaires are certainly the worst and most visible offenders, but a materialist lens allows one to see that each and every capitalist serves interests that are fundamentally in conflict with those of the working class. To operate any other way would be to betray their own interests, and wouldn’t make for a very effective result.
Liberation will only come when the working class has the power to decide collectively how our resources will be used, which will only come when we have majority control over the means of production, which will eventually lead to the capitalist class becoming completely obsolete. Liberation means being able to provide for our needs above anything else; for the sake of our humanity alone, and from the work that we are already doing; rather than our labor power being extracted for private gains and our needs provided only to the extent that it serves capitalists’ profit motives.
I understand that. I just don’t think it’s possible
Why is that? Have you ever spent time thinking about how that would be any more or less possible under the current system than, say, seizing the wealth of billionaires and socializing it back to the working class? How would the latter ever be possible by any means short of revolution, especially now if Trump gets his way? What will you do when the ruling class doesn’t put that kind of relief on the table? How much oppression and destruction will you consent to, if you believe liberation is not possible and things can only get worse from here?
If you don’t believe in it, you won’t fight for it. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. That’s exactly why our system does everything in its power; both to obscure revolutionary working class history, and to inflate the state’s ability to repress dissent. So I’ll repeat this until the day I die: it’s been done before under worse circumstances.
Russians and Cubans were under brutal dictatorship. Haitians were completely enslaved by one of the most powerful colonial forces in their time. Vietnamese guerillas successfully fought off invasion by the single most militaristic nation in the world, and they aren’t alone in having done so (see North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, so on). If I could speculate, I’d say China’s political and economic situation in 1950 is a pretty reasonable outcome for the direction we’re heading now in the US. Regardless of how you feel about what came after each of these struggles, the factual reality is that these weren’t armies sponsored by any state. These were working class people fighting directly against the states that profited from their exploitation.
All of those people got organized and won liberation from their domestic oppressors, doing their part to weaken the empire, despite what would seem as insurmountable odds to a disorganized worker. It’s on us now to organize ourselves against our own oppressors, to get them off both our backs and theirs, and we can’t do that without maintaining optimism about our ability to win should we fight. We know that Fascism can only exist for so long until it cannibalizes itself. As a collective we are capable of beating it long before that comes to pass. If we allow the state to beat that optimism out of us then we are only greatly delaying our liberation and doing the ultimate disservice to our people.
I hear you and I don’t want to diminish your hope because I do think the younger generation sees the benefit of it. I just think you’d have to convince the right it’s a good idea
I don’t think we should waste our time trying to convince fascists of anything (most of whom are the wealthy elites we outnumber anyways), other than by carrying out the consequences of their actions. Their interests are simply not aligned with ours.
That’s okay though, because threshold number of people required to disrupt the system and make real change is much smaller than you would think. All it takes is coordination between those of us that believe in upholding the dignity of the working class, and we gain that coordination by organizing and spreading class consciousness.
The thing is that most of the everyday people in the US already agree with us. Even Republican voters. Most people believe that housing, food, and healthcare should be affordable; that there should be real solutions to homelessness and crime; even bodily autonomy (pro-choice, gender affirming care) is popular among the people. It’s just that neither party puts up real solutions, both of them make excuses for why those things are not possible, and the Republicans are really good at making up scapegoats and creating non-solutions that sound really good to someone already conditioned to accept them, which the Democrats generally play along with and split the difference rather than putting up any real challenge or counter-argument.
As for the aesthetics of socialism, even Castro eventually had to spell out that it was, in fact, socialism that was responsible for all the gains they had made since their revolution - that the bogeymen they were so afraid of were simply projections made by their former oppressors. Working class consciousness doesn’t have to be 100% before anything can ever happen. It can grow as a result of our success after the fact.
Excerpt from Fidel Castro's Speech on Marxism-Leninism
Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/cuba/archive/castro/1961/12/02.htm