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this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2023
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Mildly Infuriating
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This argument is so frustrating, because it totally ignores the fact that the common thread, both for communist countries and capitalist countries, and both for intentional genocide and crises through incompetence, is the consolidation of power in a small set of individuals or group that prioritises their own self interest over the common good.
The big issue with "trying" communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.
Never mind the fact that genocide is absolutely not limited to communist countries, and that genocide goes against the actual fundamental principles of a communist system, which is centred on equality.
Yes, the USSR committed genocide - so did Britain and America, and so are modern capitalist Russia and China right now.
There's loads of good reasons both for and against every economic system, communism included. But "communism=genocide lalalala" is just a cheap excuse to totally avoid considering the merits of a different economic system. Doing that denies yourself the opportunity to genuinely consider how a different economic approach, whether that's communism or just using concepts from the ideology, could improve the lives of citizens in a healthy democracy.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was under the impression that violent revolution is exactly what Marx said was essential in order to bring about the communist utopia he envisioned. That's precisely why communism has such a bad rep among anyone but edgy teenagers and college students. Are you telling me Marx was wrong about this? If so, please elaborate.
Okay - I shall do so.
You are wrong.
If you're going to base your disdain for the entire concept on a single work by a single author, then it would help if you actually read the work itself, rather than deciding what it says based on, I can only assume, something someone you know said offhand that one time.
So as a starting point, here's the whole work. Why not do a quick search through for the word "violence" and see if he ever advocates for it (spoiler: he does not). https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/currentstudents/postgraduate/masters/modules/theoryfromthemargins/manifest.pdf
However, in his conclusion, he does say this of communists:
This is an interesting passage to interpret - the use of the word force in this passage is fairly vague, for example, overthrowing the status quo via legislation enforced by police would be considered "by force", regardless of whether the police use violence. This is because it is done not by allowing what Marx calls the bourgeoisie to decide to switch to communism, but by enforcing it through law.
Now, there's more to unpack here, so I'll break it into a couple of sections...
Revolution
Marx does use the word "revolution" a lot in his manifesto, however typically not in the meaning you're envisioning (ie an overthrowing of government) but instead the meaning a fundamental shift in distribution of power and wealth within a society.
Is violence ever acceptable?
As a thought experiment, imagine a country ruled by a purely evil autocrat. This theoretical autocrat abuses their power, harms innocent people on a whim and takes whatever they please from their citizens. There is no allowance for dissent, no democracy for the people to represent their interests.
Would it be acceptable for the people of this nation to use violence to remove this dictator from power? I think most people would probably say yes in this context.
So we have determined that in some scenarios, violence may be acceptable when it is the only possible way to overturn an oppressive system of government.
That's not to say that it's the only way any system can be changed, or that violence is acceptable when it can be avoided.
The consequences of violent revolution
While violent revolution will change the distribution of power, it also provides an chance for opportunists to abuse this power vacuum to consolidate it around themselves, under the guise of being part of that movement.
Good examples of this are, of course, Stalin in the USSR, and, as a non-communist example, Putin consolidating power in Russia during the USSR's collapse and its transition to oligarchic capitalism.
The geopolitics of 1840s Europe
Europe in the 1840s was not like it is today, especially in a political sense. The continent was made up almost entirely of absolutist monarchies, with no democratic systems to allow the voices of the citizens to be heard.
There was a wave of failed revolutions against the feudal systems under these monarchies across the continent, which, with few exceptions, were brutally crushed by the states with almost no change.
Understanding these circumstances, it is easier to understand why the idea of transitioning to an equal distribution of both political, and in communism's case, economic power through peaceful means would be considered not just difficult, but laughably impossible.
Many of the seeds of the modern democracies we enjoy today were planted during this period of turmoil, in part in response to Marx's manifesto.
Communism and revolution under modern democracy
Now we have the privilege of living under modern democracies across much of the world, we have an unprecedented opportunity to actually consider Marx's ideas for a different societal structure, and implement changes that would be for the benefit for all citizens through democratic systems.
But we need to actually have reasonable discussions about these ideas and their impact, and "communism=genocide" is not only wrong, but takes a hostile stance against the concept before even understanding what the ideas are.
Edit: wrong link
Straight from the manifesto, page 12:
Accuse me of picking and choosing the most salient passage, but I would say this doesn't leave too much room for interpretation about what the word "forcible" means. And no, you don't get to talk your way out by saying 'overthrowing the status quo via legislation enforced by police would be considered "by force", regardless of whether the police use violence.' Isn't ACAB a quintessentially leftist term? Or does it not apply when the police work for you instead of against you?
Also, just to give a counterexample to your "evil autocrat" problem: Gandhi managed to get rid of British colonial rule without ever advocating for or using violence. So no, the idea that violent oppression justifies a violent response is flawed. Violence always begets more violence, there is literally no exception. You can't murder your way to a fair and just society, it always ends in oppression.
That quote isn't saying "we should go start some violence for a bit of fun".
It's talking about the exact revolutions that were ongoing during that period (see the section on 1840s geopolitics), and noting that the ongoing revolutions give an opportunity for citizen centred political system - ie a democracy.
ACAB isn't some international stance the left takes. It's a reaction to the frequently racist, violent and corrupt policing specifically in the USA. And it certainly doesn't mean there should be no law enforcement whatsoever - you'd be extremely hard pressed to find anybody who would take that stance.
Counterexamples: the British suffragette movement (which was notably extraordinarily violent, despite its common modern image as a quiet, polite disagreement), the American civil war, the Swedish coup of 1809, the Ukrainian defensive resistance in the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war.
Gandhi was a fantastic and principled man, and had an enormous impact. But, whether or not he liked it, violence was absolutely a part of the end of British colonial rule, and would have been even if every revolutionary was exclusively nonviolent, because the violence by the British was not conditional on violence by the Indians.
But all of this is separate to the key point - regardless of whether one considers it an effective method of revolution, violence isn't the aim of a communist system, and it's use is only considered acceptable in a scenario where that is not the current system, and when it would be the only possible method to overthrow that system.
Edit: as an aside, even Gandhi accepted that violence can be necessary:
Right. As usual, when you press people on it, they'll end up admitting that none of their principles are really absolute and they're always willing to make an exception as long as it's in their own favor.
Not super familiar with examples 1 and 3, but would you say that violence against women remains an ongoing problem in the UK? Has there really been no political violence in Sweden since 1809? I don't think I even need to point out that America remains an extraordinarily violent society according to leftists (and even many people on the right) or that there literally still IS war in the Ukraine to this day.
"Violence begets more violence" doesn't mean that violence will always continue to escalate (if it did, we'd clearly all be dead already), it means that violence never ends violence. At best, all of its victories will be temporary. All you ever get is a momentary truce once everyone is tired of fighting, but as soon as they recuperate, violence is back on the menu.
And just to be clear, I never claimed that violence was the goal of communism, just that communists seem to universally agree that violence is acceptable in order to reach their goals.
As far as the Ghandi quote goes, I've spent a considerable amount of time thinking about what he could have meant by this, and the best explanation I can come up with is that he may have sought to differentiate between non-violent action and non-action (which is nonviolent by definition). In other words, if you are being demonstrably mistreated, it's better to stand up and do something about it (even if violent), but it's better yet (even infinitely superior) to do something that doesn't involve violence (like protesting peacefully). Violent resistance in the face of injustice takes some courage, but non-violent resistance takes far more courage yet.
The ACAB BS
Nah man, I never said that was my stance, and that's because it isn't my stance. You brought ACAB up, insisted it was my opinion, and then whined that I disagreed with it. You don't know me.
Violence
I never said that violence ends violence. I merely said that sometimes the result of violence is a better situation than without it. It's not a simple thing to evaluate, but I would absolutely say that women having the right to vote in the UK is worth the violence they committed, and, additionally, physical violence against them is hugely reduced as a result.
Violence is sometimes worth it, and deciding when that is the case is extremely difficult to quantify. But writing off an entire economic system because one proponent of it said sometimes it's worth it is beyond absurd.
This is such a terrible reason. Firstly, it's based on your personal idea of what communists think - I dare say you don't know many communists based on this, most likely not a single one in person.
Unless you think that no violence is ever acceptable - I expect it's unlikely you think Ukraine should stop fighting and hope the Russian army just go home - then you also hold the stance that violence is acceptable in some circumstances.
The Gandhi quote
You've hit the nail on the head - Gandhi was totally committed to peace and would refuse to commit violence under any circumstances. But he was acutely aware of the fact that violence could be an effective tool against oppression.
Let me put it this way: I’ve never met a communist who argued that it was possible to bring about communism nonviolently, much less that it was desirable or even essential to do so in order for it to succeed. It’s always “we may have to do a little bit of violence at first, but after that, we’ll all be nice a peaceful, because all our problems will have been solved and there’ll be no reason to be violent anymore.”
I’m sorry, but I don’t buy that. Like I said, violence begets more violence. Once you agree that it could potentially be a solution, there is no reason not to use it when push comes to shove, that’s why there will never be an end to it.
Also, my point about ACAB wasn’t that you personally support it, just that communists overwhelming hate the police and see them as a tool of fascist oppression when they’re in the hands of capitalists, but as warriors of peace when they’re in the hands of communists. Their violent enforcers: corrupt and evil. Our violent enforcers: stunning and brave. Basically it all comes down to arguing fairness is a matter of who is on top. The problem with that is that power always corrupts, not matter how good its intentions. I know that’s likely not going to convince you, but I’m only explaining my point of view on why I don’t find communism very convincing.
Have you noticed that almost every argument you have is based entirely on what other things you think communists think, as opposed to anything about what communism actually is?
Your entire ACAB argument is totally unrelated to both me and communism other than the fact that you've decided that's what communists think.
Your chain of reasoning was:
(1) Communists hate police (???)
(2) Communists only hate police because they don't work for them
(3) Police have power
(4) Power corrupts
=> (5) Communism is bad
1 & 2 are both just random bullshit you've decided is true about communists
3 is true
4 is true
5 is totally unrelated to 1, 2, 3 & 4
Well yes, that's kinda the entire concept of communism. A huge part of its goal to equitably distribute wealth is that it reduces the power imbalance caused by the huge difference in wealth in capitalist economies.
I don’t now man, 2020 isn’t that long ago, I remember the protests fairly vividly, along with the demands for dismantling any and all police.
Unless you’re going to tell me those weren’t real communists. In which case, believe me, I’ve heard that one before.
So no, I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that communists hate the police, if only, as you admit, because they don’t work for them, not based on any principle.
Also, I didn’t say that that from 1-4 follows that communism is bad, just that it is no better than the capitalism it seeks to replace, because it does nothing to address the violence it claims is fundamental to capitalist oppression. It’s more accurate to say that communism is dumb because it engages in magical thinking, i.e. the belief that violence can be good if only it was being done by the right people.
Yes, perhaps things would get better for some people for some time. But in the end, it will always suffer from the same type of corruption as any other violence-based system, so there is no reason to believe it would be preferable to what we have now. It will just end up perpetuating the same cycle of violence that it claims is at the root of all of our problems.
You're still pulling shit out of your arse - your proof that communists hate police is that some people (not communists, just some people) protested against police 4 years ago??? That had nothing to do with communism whatsoever. You clearly don't understand that not all leftists are communists, and not all leftists are ACAB.
So you've decided that a ~200 year old economic system is actually about an unrelated movement that's happened in the last decade.
COMMUNISM IS NOT ABOUT POLICING. It's an economic system based on the abolition of private wealth.
It doesn't say whether police are good, or when violence is appropriate.
"Communism is dumb because there is violence and communism doesn't solve that violence"
Eating lunch doesn't solve all violence either, but you still do it.
This is the shit that frustrates me to no end. I'm not even saying we should switch to a communist system. I'm saying we should put enough consideration into the economic concepts to pick out what works well and what doesn't in a modern society.
But you're so wrapped up in your personal imagination of what communists think that you're entirely incapable of thinking about its propositions at all.
You realize that getting upset over this isn’t helping to prove your point, right? If anything, it proves you’re out of arguments and you think you can bully me into into accepting your point of view.
Sorry, not going to happen.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Marx passionately and repeatedly made the case that violence and inequality in a capitalist system are intrinsically connected, i.e. that a capitalist system requires violence in order to enforce and maintain the inequality that is present. But you (and Marx) also say that communists can (and should) violence to bring about equality.
My question, therefore, is simply this: if inequality is the result of violence, how can communism ever hope to achieve equality in the future by using the same means that it claims causes inequality in the present? That’s simply fighting fire with fire. If their violence justifies our violence, our violence will justify theirs. And on and on it goes. No amount of violence will ever stop violence. It just won’t.
This is why I'm frustrated - you work entirely on the assumption that violence is an integral part of communism, but that's really not the case, at least not in a way distinct from how it can be necessary to maintain stability in any other system. For example, physically restraining a murderer to arrest them is appropriate, but that is not as a result of communism or capitalism, but as a functional requirement for the prevention of further violence.
While moving from one political system to another frequently involves violence, that doesn't mean it's an integral part of the system itself. For example, the transition to democracy from absolute monarchy involved violence in almost every example, but violence isn't part of democracy itself.
But my frustration isn't that you don't have the same point of view as me - in fact I've actively avoided stating my own stance on economic systems - it's that you repeatedly use strawman arguments to avoid actually engaging with the economic concepts themselves.
You got this right, in that the idea is that inequality is enforced through violence. But you assume there's some consensus on when it should be used to push back against inequality, and you inexplicably seem to believe that this consensus is "always". But this really isn't the case.
That’s where you wrong, because violence IS part of democracy, since the majority gets to inflict its will on the minority (or at least choose representatives who will do so on their behalf) via the use of the police, who are authorized to use any violence necessary in order to get people to comply with the laws.
If communism doesn’t have any plans for achieving their goals without the use of police (or violent enforcers by any other name), then it stands to reason that it will just be violence-based as that which is it seeks to replace, and therefore just as prone to causing inequality among people, regardless of its intentions.
As I said before, violence will never lead to peace, at best you will get a temporary truce whenever people are tired of fighting. But it will always be prone to erupt again. That’s why I don’t support communism. And yes, I don’t support democracy, monarchy, or dictatorship either, for the same reason.
You're working on the assumption that violence just creates random inequality whenever it occurs, rather than that the use of violence in our current system is a tool used with intent to maintain the status quo.
Deciding we shouldn't make any change to our economic system because police would still be necessary is, frankly, an absurd stance to take. To be clear, communism is not an alternative to democracy, it's an economic not political system, though of course its ideals do align with democracy.
So you don't support any political system? Or do you have some magic solution in which everyone magically lives in harmony?
Well, you’re working on the assumption that violence CAN be used to create both inequality and equality, it just depends on who is using it. Since it’s obviously nonsensical to argue that it’s literally the person that’s making the difference (otherwise, monarchy could potentially do just as good a job at creating or maintaining equality as communism could), it must be the intention behind the use of violence that makes the difference.
That leads to the unproven assertion that it is the intention of capitalism to create unjust inequality, when instead the intention is to allow people to freely choose their employment or source of income based on what they do best, and reward people based on how much they contribute to society.
Sure, you can say that maybe that used to be the case at one point and it’s all gone out of whack since then, but that would only prove that intention doesn’t guarantee outcome, hence there would be no reason to assume that communism would have any better chance at creating a better outcome for everyone in the long run.
If communism isn’t a political system, why does it require a revolution in order to implement? If it’s only about economics, then it should be possible to implement on a smaller scale (say, a single company) in any political system. And if it is so clearly superior to capitalism, then such a company would outperform its competitors and naturally lead to a proliferation of communism that way, because most or all of its competitors would end up adopting it. Yet you never see any communists arguing for that sort of approach, it’s always “smash everything with fist first and then rebuild from the ashes”. That’s why I can’t help but feel like violence is, in fact, the whole point.
Neither. I don’t support any political system because politics is simply arguing about who gets to point the gun at whom. Any political solution to anything always involves violence. And I don’t have a magical solution either because the only alternative I see is to educate people in order to help them realize this, in the hopes that one day, enough people will see that there can, in fact, never be a political solution without violence, and therefore stop looking for such solutions and instead work together to try and resolve their disputes on their own instead of looking for another powerful man with a gun to get them what’s theirs.
Tell me you have absolutely no idea what an economic system is without saying it. It's not a method for optimising the amount of money that can be squeezed out of a business.
Okay, well there's no point discussing them ever I guess, cool, back to feudalism everyone. Thank goodness you saved us from wasting our time trying to find a system that ensures quality of life.
To be perfectly honest with you, it's immensely clear that you really don't have even the most basic idea of what communism is, but you have decided that whatever it is, it's terrible. There's no point having a discussion if you refuse to actually understand the subject of the discussion.
Let's leave these here - you're clearly not interested in actually considering the concepts, so there's nothing to be gained from this. It'll save us both a lot of wasted further time.
Wrong comment mate
My bad. I fixed it.
No, Marx advocated for action to bring about a socialist state. Marx advocated for a variety of solutions, including violence when necessary, but also general strikes, reform, and negotiation. Marx wasn't particularly married to any single way of overthrowing previous capitalist societies - he simply knew he wouldn't be a easy journey.
Gradualist Socialism was the political project for Social Democrats in post-war Europe. They had 30-odd years to achieve it in several countries. The issue becomes that once they started notching up victories, radicalism decreased, and that when they're not starving and oppressed people categorically will not vote to let someone collectivize their farms and expropriate their homes. It seems clear to me that in real-world conditions, a Socialist state can only come about through revolution, because the path in a democracy is far too long and leaves far too many angles of attack from a liberal opposition.
I think it's also worth considering the impact of different voting systems on this as well, which is hard to do in an experimental way.
The effect of, for example, first past the post's 2 party system is hard to know for sure, but almost certainly has a substantial impact on how political views transition over the long term.
The effect of the 2 party system on how people understand politics and society is incredibly interesting
That maybe implies that the happy spot is somewhere in the middle.
Maybe? We're currently trying to implement a different economic transition, from pollution to green. I don't think popular resistance to those changes imply that we should try for a happy medium instead. Similarly, the difficulty in achieving Socialism democratically doesn't necessarily imply anything about how desirable the end state would be.