Since reading Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution and discussing with my wife about it, we both got to the conclusion that a party should have its goal in their laws and executive actions to get rid of capitalism instead of making it “livable” under it, like the Northern countries.
Now, that is mostly clear to me, and I kinda also understand what Lenin spoke of in Left-wing communism (haven’t finished reading it). But how would one go about doing so?
I also recognize that having a mix of both reformist and revolutionary laws before the revolution might be advantageous and a worthy tactic to raise the class consciousness in the short term and starting to lay the foundation for the revolution on the long term. But this is very abstract and I can’t quite fully understand how this would be measured and which law would have to be reformist or revolutionary.
My interpretation of revolutionary is anything that is inherently anti-capitalist. This can either impede exploitation of a sector of the current economy (like abolishing the ability of landowners to own more than 2 homes or outright banning corporations of buying homes and subsequently appropriating their homes) or make it impossible to extract profits (collectivization of national industries and running them on non-profit basis).
Am I missing something here tho? Are there any other useful tactics or strategies to apply in the European imperial core?
Well this is why I use Iran as an example. Iran has conducted warfare, there is no doubt about it. They are not acting like pacifists, refusing to do violence and getting themselves massacred in the process. But they still have lines they don’t cross.
The liberal conception of moral high ground is more akin to pacifism, in my understanding of it. Though it is also kind of nonsensical and contradictory because it’s the liberals who don’t have power who most seem to preach it and the liberals who do have power definitely don’t wield it like pacifists when it comes time to enact imperialist policies and the like. Liberalism in general has a lot of self-deceit and deceit of others going on.
When I speak of morality, I am thinking more like Iran than I am thinking like Michelle Obama’s vapid “when they go low, we go high” (while her husband was ordering drone strikes).
I see no reason why revolutionaries should not exercise restraint and, in fact, among revolutionaries who do not exercise restraint, what I would expend to see is a lot of adventurist random violence that does not coherently contribute to revolutionary goals and wastes energy and resources in the process. This doesn’t mean I’m going to go preachy about every person who is being exploited and takes matters into their own hands. It does mean that I’m not going to promote conducting revolutionary goals in that way and I’m going to push back against language that suggests boundaries don’t matter.
In short, I would agree that the liberal conception of moral highground is damaging (and is more often just nonsense). I would insist, however, that there is such a thing as real moral highground and that disciplined revolutionaries are perfectly capable of practicing it and have done so at times in the past. This does not exclude conducting warfare when under attack; even liberals would usually agree that war as self-defense is morally justified. War is always going to be somewhat ugly, but it doesn’t have to be no holds barred conducted as brutally as possible to maximize civilian death and suffering as the imperialists do.
I mean if what you are getting at is that violence for the sake of violence or sadistic pleasure is wrong i 100% agree.(punctuation left the chat)
But i cant help to feel theres some sort of miscommunication in here, thats why i would like to know how you feel about Dresden.
Dresden? You mean the bombing of the German city during WWII?
The fire bombing i mean
From what I can find on it, it was carried out by British and US forces, so I’m not sure what it has to do with the practice of communists. Not trying to avoid the question either, I’m just not sure where the connection is. It looks like indiscriminate targeting of civilians to me, which is typical for colonial forces like them (and the US did similar to imperial Japan - worse when you consider the atomic bombs).
I wish to know whats your moral stance on the Dresden Fire Bombings(considering that the end goal was to defeat the nazis)
Well from what I can tell, it was carried out by the sort of institutions (e.g. the US, Britain) who took on Nazis after the war via Operation Paperclip, or had Nazis in NATO positions. So was it even about defeating Nazis? Is the US/israel trying to defeat the IRGC in Iran when they murder Minab schoolchildren or carry out longstanding colonial policies based in racism and maximizing civilian death?
I find colonialism to be very fucked up (I would hope you do too) and at that point in the war, and given who was doing it, I’m doubtful it had very much to do with defeating Nazis. It was the USSR who did the brunt of the fighting against Nazi Germany and I haven’t heard about them fire bombing civilians to do it.