Like let's give them an opportunity to study theory and apply doctrine in reeducation camps before committing them to a life of exile or death. Everyone will either come around, or they won't. Simple as that.
I say rip it off like a band-aid. Explain why it's for the greater good. I think there's clearly a problem with messaging in just criticizing capitalism without advocating for the alternative.
It's really easy to kick over sandcastles, but it's hard to build one with such limited tools. So let's unveil the castle in its full glory. Let's go mask off and make this a reality.
:stalin: :juche-boi: :evo: :fidel-salute: :xi: :chavez-salute: :chairman: :guaido: :back-to-me: :sankara-salute: :nasrallah:
Have you even tried anything else before coming to this conclusion ?
Which part? What will be the consequence for those who don't go along with Communism?
Love too "advocate for the alternative" of socialism by feeding into strawman commie stereotypes and forgetting what nuance is
In a successful communist revolution, what will be done of the liberals and reactionaries who don't play ball?
It depends what form the revolution will take and the conditions surrounding it- I don't claim to be able to divine what that will look like. Have we, by this hypothetical point, successfully swayed public opinion leftward enough to mount a popular movement against capitalism as an institution? Have we somehow disrupted or rendered ineffective the stream of propaganda the upper class foists upon the people en masse? What is the point of organizing, agitating, and educating in the moment FOR if not to win people over, make allies, improve material conditions, and ensure that some dystopian re-education campaign would be the last possible resort instead of a logical conclusion?
ETA: That's not to deny that there would be people irreformable, but @ScreamoBMO has a good take upthread. We will make no excuses for the terror, but that certainly doesn't mean we'd revel in it. We're leftists because we want a better world, and are willing to risk and take decisive action to achieve that goal. That doesn't mean we should take pride in it.
E2: Clarifying and cleaning
assuming "not playing ball" means actively agitating against the new communist government, what the fuck else are we going to do with them?
i am not part of the Communist Party of China, so i don't know why you are asking me
Just to make an inference. I've seen you active in some China struggle sessions, you aren't afraid to opine then.
It feels dishonest to string people along with rich promises without going into the true nuts and bolts. This whole "hiding our true power level" thing feels shady.
I guess part of where I'm coming from with this is perhaps an indictment of China. Like it's clear they're pursuing an authoritarian socialist state, and they've got all sorts of reeducation camps across several autonomous regions, and while people here are pushing the "enemies get the wall" while also denying that any sort of genocide might be taking place are either deluding themselves or actively being dishonest.
This feels more and more like a bit with each new controversial topic that gets brought up. It's also disingenuous to claim that "enemies get the wall" is the end-all-be-all of solutions for reactionary individuals post-revolution. At the end of the day, as AlephNull said, the solution(s?) wouldn't be dictated by any one of us online, but the people, together. Whatever solution ends up being implemented will, by its nature, be a shitload more unified than any current political struggle in capitalist society.
I guess another way to put it is, if we all grew up in a capitalist system, how did we all arrive here (give or take a few ideological differences)? Even in a marketplace of free ideas, I have still found my way to communities like this. So why does it need to be browbeat into others rather than organically letting them come to the same conclusions we have?
Organically? The capitalist superstructure spends an incredible amount of money to keep itself up... It coups countries that go pink or red in Latam. It constantly reduces the opportunities for radicalisation and education. We have to actively fight it, browbeat it, propagandise.
everywhere, politics is radicalizing. whether to the left or the right, the way things are today is no longer stable. so people go looking for answers, for comfort, for community with others and they do so in places that are already familiar to them. for this community, that place was reddit. I doubt many people came here without first spending time on reddit and becoming frustrated with its reactionary politics. moreover, that's why our userbase is so demographically homogenous relative to the whole population.
Even in a marketplace of free ideas
what free marketplace?
So why does it need to be browbeat into others rather than organically letting them come to the same conclusions we have?
I'm not sure what the "it" is here but generally, this community holds certain lines partially because we've fought over them so many times and have found a few positions we can all definitely agree on, and partially because we know what the consequence of allowing certain lines to slip will be, eventually -- this place becomes indifferentiable from reddit.
I like this question, a lot- and thinking about it helped me understand why I enjoy reading others' stories of radicalization. It certainly feels at times that in a society so inundated with right-wing propaganda, so fundamentally anti-left, that finding ourselves here makes us special.
I think, at the end of the day, we were lucky in a sense- some of us came to this space through genuine ideological self-critique spurred on by nothing more than interest in politics, but I find that many of us just happened to stumble upon the right take at the right time in our lives (when our material conditions had degraded against our own internal ideas of meritocracy and work ethic, or dissonance between what we saw and felt versus what we believed to be true became too much).
Who's to say that all that it takes to bring most people around to support us wouldn't be simply solidarity and education combined with the absence of capitalist propaganda efforts, which some people are deeply vulnerable to?
Fair enough. I guess I just see the holes too, and I'm just much more cynical about human nature and the lust for power.
You've officially got me out of my league. Your answer to that question would depend on which of the myriad communist tendencies you subscribe to, and I'm not well-read enough in theory to defend a stance there. However, Screamo nails it again. Building broad support for an inclusive left movement and seeing what shape the movement begins to take will provide answers to those questions in time, but with current politics our efforts are best spent doing just that.
I guess the cruelty I see is a new world order by any stripe. Don't want to adapt to our ideology? Back to the lithium mine with an electric collar and police drones.
Ooh, nice, thanks. That should keep me busy for awhile.
I'm starting with Jordan B. Peterson - 12 Rules to Life An Antidote to Chaos
I figure if he's got a middle initial, he must be a distinguished academic. :jbp:
lol I was wondering how that would come off.
No, I appreciate the link, just found it funny it was listed.
