Heralds of History

Post Reply New Topic

Personal backup of special historical data.
Only represents counter intuitive data collation.
Does not represent personal views.

1. Marx and Engels supported owning guns.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm

Are you implying that it is the Right-Wing Conservatives who are the only true heirs to Communism, and not the Left-Wing Liberals?

American self-determination has nothing to do with me. I don't support holding guns in my community.
Both parties in the United States have nothing to do with Marxism.

However, historical facts are historical facts.
If them make people(including/mainly myself) confused about the real world, it is not their responsibility.
This will not be the only one.

Pro-gun leftist here.

I can respect leftists who oppose gun ownership, but they should not claim to support revolution if they oppose guns. Working within the capitalist system is inherently limiting. The right and center will use every legal and political tactic possible to undermine leftist attempts to work within the system.

Revolutionary change does not happen by asking nicely. Do not enable the state's monopoly on violence by voluntarily disarming yourself--or at least do not claim to support revolution if you do so.

yes. The key is the left-wing social consensus with a base.
Otherwise, without sufficient foundation, even if the left wing wins in the violence, it will have to exert enough repression to maintain the revolutionary achievements - produce the vanguardism tendency, and then be usurped from within after failing to maintain vanguardism.
This usually lasts only a generation. It would be sad if the result of the bloodshed that turned life upside down was just that.

If social consensus does change, it doesn't matter whether you hold guns or not.

And when facing the state machine, there is no essential difference between what you hold a kitchen knife and a pistol. The difference in firepower faced by Marx and Engels' era is very different from that at present.
If guns do not contribute to this goal, then the other goals it contributes to are not the part that the left likes.

I agree with most of what y'all are saying. I did not mean to suggest violent revolution was the only solution, merely that part of worker organization must include self defense or else we will be viewed as toothless.

Using solely violent means without social organizing or support is a good way to destroy your legitimacy and makes repression the only way to maintain power. The Bolsheviks are a good example. There was a sizable left in Imperial Russia, but the Bolsheviks were only a part of it. They undermined their long term ability to hold onto power by betraying the rest of the left and abusing the general population. This meant that when the USSR attempted reforms in the 80s, the first thing people did was denounce the regime and abandon communism.
This has done devastating damage to the left in eastern Europe, as they are seen as violent and facetious in their claims of representing the common man and democracy.

That's largely aligned with my understanding, that the failure to build a broad enough power base effectively ensured they'd always exist as something that was imposing itself rather than something that enough people felt invested in because it represented their interests.

This seems to be something representative democracies do well, even sometimes when it's ceased to be true people believe they have influence, or at least can potentially have it.

2. The views of the Communist Party of China on democracy.
Xinhua Daily, the organ newspaper of the former Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was founded in Hankou on January 11, 1938, and was suspended by the government of the Republic of China on February 28, 1947. It was reissued in Nanjing on April 30, 1949. It is now the organ newspaper of the CPC Jiangsu Provincial Committee and is sponsored by Xinhua Daily newspaper group.

The following is from its editorial section.

"democratic politics"2/25/1939

3.IS YUGOSLAVIA A SOCIALIST COUNTRY?
COMMENT ON THE OPEN LETTER OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE CPSU (III)
by the Editorial Departments of Renmin Ribao (People's Daily) and Hongqi (Red Flag) September 26, 1963

Brief summary:

1. Yugoslavia has a large number of private capital and private enterprises, and tax policies are used to encourage the development of private enterprises, which is also written into the constitution;

2. Yugoslavia has a close relationship with the United States, receiving a large amount of Western assistance and investment, and Yugoslavia has become an imperialist investment field;

3. Yugoslavia allows individuals to buy and sell foreign exchange and engage in foreign trade. As we all know, foreign trade is monopolized by the state, which is the basic principle of socialism;

4. Yugoslavia does not enforce agricultural collectivization. Since 1951, a large number of agricultural cooperatives have been dissolved, and there are a large number of rich farmers in the countryside. They also viciously cursed that "collectivization and deprivation are one thing";

5. The Yugoslav government included 3/4 of the income of enterprises into the state treasury through tax and credit policies;

6. Yugoslavia pursues the policy of workers' autonomy and hands over enterprises to the collective management of workers. Workers can distribute profits and determine wages by themselves. This is an anarchist practice. In a real proletarian country, enterprises should all be managed by the state;

7. Yugoslavia has a huge gap between the rich and the poor, and some managers receive more dividends than the whole labor collective;

8. Yugoslavia imported a large number of goods from imperialist countries and became a dumping ground for goods from imperialist countries;

9. The fierce competition among enterprises in Yugoslavia has led to the bankruptcy of a large number of enterprises and the serious unemployment in society;

10. Yugoslavia has a lot of trade with imperialist countries, a large number of minerals produced in Yugoslavia are transported to the United States, and a large number of Yugoslav enterprises contract for western enterprises. Yugoslavia has been completely kidnapped by the world market;

4. Völker Europas, wahrt eure heiligsten Güter(Peoples of Europe, protect your most sacred possessions!)