In light of how Xi seems to be steering the country more left I'm left wondering how the fuck the old historical leaders were even real
like maybe it's because I live in the USA so everyone past a certain political station should be only be met with trueanon gun cock sound but it's genuinely incredible to me that anything positive about people like Chavez, Che, Allende, etc. or like Stalin or Mao could even be kinda true
It's cra-zee to me that one day some MF just woke up one day and was like: "I'm going to make this bitch right!" and went, got power, and didn't immediately turn into some self interested maniac and then went and unironically made like the entire formerly illiterate population literate, gave everyone jobs, killed all the Nazis instead of joining them and in general tried to make things not completely awful
I reminds me of an anecdote on r/communism where some guy in LatAm said he became a communist because of the stories his dad had of just being in the presence of Che where he said "he was like a superhero, but REAL"
It's like how
Maybe it's unbelievable because of my own cynicism but it's so incomprehensible to me that like....they existed. And that maybe they will again some day
Most people are actually good. It's only in systems that favor psychopaths that we end up with Kings, Emperors and CEOs.
That, and only in such systems do you end up with such a heavily propagandized populace that should any one of them be let into the halls of power that they can only conceive of continuing to do bad things.
Those kind of people are everywhere, it's just hard to remain in power when all the capitalists in the world want to kill you.
It's not just you, the belief that power inevitably corrupts is pretty central to anarchism. The old 19th century anarchists thought Marx's idea of a dictatorship of the proletariat wouldn't work because they thought it's leaders would become corrupted, even if they had good intentions, and most modern anarchists are suspicious of communist states and leaders today.
the belief that power inevitably corrupts
I feel like it's more accurate to say that "a corruptoid, will eventually find power"
I think there are people who are not corrupt and theoretically would never become corrupted.
The problem is when the leaders changeThere's a reason a bunch of archetypal stories about great leaders involve the leader being chosen for leadership rather than seeking it out.
How many times did Stalin try to step down again?
Human organizations eventually become led by people who do whatever it is that leads to success within that organization, who then lead the organization by continuing to do that thing. The long-term actions of any organization are the external consequences of whatever makes people advance within it.
(If I ever get around to writing a book, this is the thesis, and the rest is an examination of different kinds of organizations, much of which is dunking on tree-shaped hierarchies.)
i don't really believe we create communism by just putting the best people in charge, and even if the hagiographies of AES leaders are all true, we ought to abandon that fixation as revolutionaries
Counterpoint: the west spends so much time spitting on these people to discredit the ideologies they're associated with, and defending them is therefore important.
You have to appreciate that systems/social forces either allowed them to, actively forced them to, or killed them.
It's because they have a material ideology to believe in and (re)form society around, with the added validation that the other guys were trying to kill them for it. Look at Xi Jinping's life. His father was a high-ranking member of the CPC who got purged a bunch of times. Xi himself has a background of having to actually work to be accepted as a member of the CPC at all, and even then they didn't trust him at first because of his father. And not just because his father got purged, but because they were wary about forming power dynasties within the party. Basically, instead of having to prove that he was loyal to the bourgeoisie, as is almost wholly the case in western life, let alone western politics, he had to prove that he was loyal to the interests of the people. We're talking about revolutionaries here who came to fully reorient their understanding of life to be one wherein the needs of the people are to be championed and the capitalist wreckers defeated.
:Care-Comrade: these people do exist, we’re just so used to having shit leaders and taught that it’s the only way
he became a communist because of the stories his dad had of just being in the presence of Che where he said “he was like a superhero, but REAL”
:deng-salute: :fidel-salute: :sankara-salute: :xi-clap:
Remember, in Feb 1917 the Bolsheviks had 24,000 members total, most of whom hadn't paid their dues in years.
Realistically it was about 30 weirdos in Switzerland doing all the work (largely shitposting).
That’s what most people would do. I think you have to believe this to be a communist.
