If Rosa would have succeeded, how much freedom could she have given the fascists, the restaurative monarchists and the tradcaths in Germany, or the industrial magnates whose assets she was about to expropriate and who could've picked from a giant pool of reactionary WW1 vets to be hired as mercenaries? While her state would've been seen as at least as much of a threat by the US and UK as they saw in the Soviet Union? At a time where the reaction in Germany brought machine guns to protests and signs saying "if you pass here, you'll be shot"? As she said herself, die Revolution wird so gewaltsam, wie es die herrschende Klasse nötig macht. The revolution will be as violent as the ruling class makes it necessary. This is the ruling class that funded and enabled Hitler. How much violence would they have made necessary in this case?
We're not talking about stable and pacified societies here. They are necessarily something else than that if they have conditions that enable a socialist revolution. In societies about to be gripped by revolution, defining freedom as the freedom of the people who'd murder you gets you fucking murdered.
Sure, once you've got a socialism going and it's reasonably safe from outside threats, things look different. It's a good discussion to have how to ensure that the structures that were necessary to bring about revolution and make it succeed don't become too entrenched, too overreaching for a society that is not at war with itself anymore and not under constant threat from hostile outside powers dominated by bourgeoise class interests who want to destroy you. But a socialist society to which that applies is as much a hypothetical as a parallel universe in which Luxemburg and Liebknecht overthrew the bourgeoise state. It is something that has never applied to any existing socialist project so far. So we'd also have to deal with the question how to get to that point, and i'm not saying that to pile more burden of proof onto you, i'm saying that because it's at least as important as the question when and how to cut back the power of the party.
If Rosa would have succeeded, how much freedom could she have given the fascists, the restaurative monarchists and the tradcaths in Germany, or the industrial magnates whose assets she was about to expropriate
Any of these is just as easy to assassinate as an anti-capitalist.
Centralized decision-making has its weaknesses and bottlenecks, no matter what ideology it's in service to. In contrast, you can't reliably take down a hive just by killing the "queen".
That's why I tried to allude to bees instead of ants.
Entomology gang can into relevant! Reality has a progressive bias, and socialist persuasions can be bolstered not just by philosophy and critical theory, but by all of the social sciences and even much of the natural sciences.
If Rosa would have succeeded, how much freedom could she have given the fascists, the restaurative monarchists and the tradcaths in Germany, or the industrial magnates whose assets she was about to expropriate and who could've picked from a giant pool of reactionary WW1 vets to be hired as mercenaries? While her state would've been seen as at least as much of a threat by the US and UK as they saw in the Soviet Union? At a time where the reaction in Germany brought machine guns to protests and signs saying "if you pass here, you'll be shot"? As she said herself, die Revolution wird so gewaltsam, wie es die herrschende Klasse nötig macht. The revolution will be as violent as the ruling class makes it necessary. This is the ruling class that funded and enabled Hitler. How much violence would they have made necessary in this case?
We're not talking about stable and pacified societies here. They are necessarily something else than that if they have conditions that enable a socialist revolution. In societies about to be gripped by revolution, defining freedom as the freedom of the people who'd murder you gets you fucking murdered.
Sure, once you've got a socialism going and it's reasonably safe from outside threats, things look different. It's a good discussion to have how to ensure that the structures that were necessary to bring about revolution and make it succeed don't become too entrenched, too overreaching for a society that is not at war with itself anymore and not under constant threat from hostile outside powers dominated by bourgeoise class interests who want to destroy you. But a socialist society to which that applies is as much a hypothetical as a parallel universe in which Luxemburg and Liebknecht overthrew the bourgeoise state. It is something that has never applied to any existing socialist project so far. So we'd also have to deal with the question how to get to that point, and i'm not saying that to pile more burden of proof onto you, i'm saying that because it's at least as important as the question when and how to cut back the power of the party.
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Any of these is just as easy to assassinate as an anti-capitalist.
Centralized decision-making has its weaknesses and bottlenecks, no matter what ideology it's in service to. In contrast, you can't reliably take down a hive just by killing the "queen".
deleted by creator
That's why I tried to allude to bees instead of ants.
Entomology gang can into relevant! Reality has a progressive bias, and socialist persuasions can be bolstered not just by philosophy and critical theory, but by all of the social sciences and even much of the natural sciences.