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Both sides!
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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I believe you've misunderstood what "eliminating a social class" means, and the history of socialism.
Eliminating a social class doesn't mean murdering everyone who belongs to it, it means eliminating the position they hold in society. If you take all capitalists, and take all of their means of production and redistribute them among the workers, you've eliminated the capitalists as a class, without the need to exterminate the individuals.
An example would be dekulakization in the USSR. Rich peasants, or kulaks, who owned lands and employed other peasants to work their lands, were subjected to forced collectivisation of their lands, between the late 1920s and throughout 1930s. This was promoted by the soviet authorities, but mostly enacted by peasants themselves who denounced kulaks for expropriation. The policy was so popular and poor peasants had such desire to expropriate the kulaks, that the central authorities had to enforce limits on percentage of people denounced as kulaks in a given territory, because it was too much. But the penalty to kulaks was rarely ever execution, it was expropriation itself, and in more extreme cases, exile to other parts of the USSR. Dekulakization took place without the murder of all kulaks, although it was a very chaotic, inefficient, and rather violent process. Of course, Marxist-Leninists are interested in the mistakes of the past, and on how we'd enforce this policy in a more efficient, less violent way. That's why we're interested in Marxist history and communist countries, and the reasons why policies were applied a given way, instead of superficial analysis of "X person was bad and that's why things were bad".
This is a fair point, but a general premise to Marxism is a bloody revolution where the working class takes the assets from capitalist bosses. Perhaps some Marxist are interested in alternative methods, but the group of communist members with which I was able to discuss this topic with were not concerned with that.
They demonized and dehumanized capitalist and talked about them as if they were not worth saving, and it was this kind of rhetoric that turned me off from their cause.
Though, it was also their rhetoric which presumed racism and sexism would be solved if we all just view eachother as workers. This seemed to underplay the effects these caste systems have on people.
I personally don't know what collective you've been engaged with, but I can tell you in my experience Marxists take racism and feminism very seriously, and that while revolution is a necessary step for the emancipation of the oppressed, it's by no means the only one since we have a lot of biases and behaviours ingrained in our cultures and societies.
A general premise of Marxism isn't necessarily a bloody revolution, it's just that the owners of the means of production normally won't just give those away to the workers without resorting to violence. In the USSR, there was a civil war started by the tsarist supporters. In Cuba, there was a war first against the Spanish, then against the American and Batista. In my home country, Spain, progressive policy during the democratic Spanish Second Republic was trumped by a fascist coup that plunged the country into authoritarianism for 40 years. In Chile, reformist Salvador Allende was also toppled and murdered by a fascist coup (CIA-backed). Mosaddegh in Iran was also deposed by capitalists. I could go on and on listing examples but I think my point is clear.
I don't know of any revolution (by revolution, I mean a change in the class-structure of a system) which has succeeded without the former ruling class exerted violence to keep their power. It's not that revolutionary Marxists want violence, it's just that historically, there doesn't seem to be a possibility of emancipation for the working classes without having to respond to violence from the ruling class.
And again, historical examples show how, generally, once these revolutions triumph, they're not as oppressive and violent against individuals formerly in power as the term "extermination of the capitalist class" suggests. I already showed you with Kulaks how they weren't murdered en-masse, simply expropriated and at worse forcibly relocated. Another example would be the last emperor of China, who wasn't murdered, but instead was forced into prison for rehabilitation and reeducation for 10 years, came out of prison openly saying that he regretted his actions as emperor, and went on to become an influential person within the institutions of the new China.
I was engaging with a collective in the US, and they seemed to be wishing for a global revolution; so excommunication would not be an option like the Kulaks unless the idea is to remove them from Earth.
I guess I can't judge all collectives when I only engaged with one (go figure, right). I appreciate you taking the time to share information with me. It was enlightening.
All good mate, thanks the discussion!