Have you ever had this feeling, that you hit a wall in a discussion? That it does not matter anymore which argument you bring forward, your idea itself is already dismissed as non-acceptable? That you get answers like: “We can discuss all along, but you won’t change my mind” or “You have your opinion, I have my opinion”. When you are in this state of a discussion, the discussion can be highly frustrating. Recently I’m wondering if it’s even worth to continue this dispute then.
All the above reactions are hints, that you are presenting an controversial idea and your discussion partner is defending her believes. We need to be careful here, since this could also mean, that you are not really discussing the topic but rather trying to convince somebody, _knowing_ that you are right and the other is not (limiting your perception of truth). This is something I do not want to support, but this is not the issue I want to write about today. I rather want to write about this wall you’re hitting on the other side.
Since I’m new to revolutionary history I speak about it quite often at the moment and try to share these interesting ideas with other people. And then I’m hitting this wall. A wall you don’t see first, but when you try to get through you can not.
If you grew up in the so called western world, you probably grew up with anti-communist propaganda [1]. And the bad thing is you didn’t even know that this was propaganda, because it is presented either as facts (mostly one-sided) or is neatly weaved into mass media. For example, it is likely that in your younger years were introduced into a comparison between Hitler and Stalin. Through the term Totalitarianism – which usage rose during the cold war – a link between fascism and the Soviet Union was created [2]. Basically the argument is: since we know fascism is evil, the Soviet Union must be as well. Surely you can not deny that a lot of cruelties happened under the name of communism, but by dismissing it so easily we also forget all the achievements of communist movements. We are bombarded by anti-communist propaganda, which only shows us the bad side. How many articles and books have you read, how many documentaries and movies have you seen that also name at least some few good achievements? And does this lack of good representation mean there were no good sides? I leave this question to you. If you care about it, I’m sure you find people who will tell you a different story.
A lot of people also grew up with a believe in non-violence. Although I find this a worthwhile ethics, I also think it has its limits. First of all the popular conception of violence is in my view fundamentally wrong. I will try to explain this in a few words, maybe I have to extend this in another article. Simply said, state violence is often not considered violence anymore. You have people who saying that the cop who is punching a demonstrator is right in doing so. On the other hand you have people who say it is wrong and the cop must be convicted, but as an individual. But here it is not viewed as a fault of the state. My stand point is that every act of police is violence since their very reason of existence is to be violent to certain people. If we put somebody into jail, this is a violent act. At this point people understand that some violence is necessary but must be under control. It our case it is in control of the state.
Now, if you come to the understanding that the state is not very good instrument for getting a fulfilled life (aka you want to abolish the state), you are actually opposing the state and its force. But even if you’re not opposing the whole state, but merely have other interest than the ruling class, you will be faced with a force that will act violently and most of the time won’t even stop to think about it. If you look at the history of revolution you find a lot of revolutions that were opposed from the former ruling class (and its army) with a counter-revolution [3][4]. The believe of general non-violence plays into the hands of the ruling class, since every movement that want to take power into its own hands is either missing the means to do this or will be criticized by other people for its usage of violence and therefore loses the approval of people. All I’m saying is, that we shouldn’t disagree with violence in general but rather should judge violence on it’s purpose and content.
The anti-communist propaganda and the believe in non-violence are part of the same wall I’m recently hitting hard. And it seems while having this discussion I forgot to whom I’m speaking to. Most of the time I’m discussing with people who are pretty fine with capitalism, who don’t see any reason to have some major changes. Yes, some small ones, but overall it is alright. Simply put, these people are not struggling under capitalism. They have privileges and certain rights others don’t have. I don’t want to deny that they also suffer under capitalism, but most of them have too much to loose to actually oppose it. And now I understand Marx final words in the communist manifesto [5]:
The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
In my case I’m talking about the world of academia. About students who unknowingly defend liberalism and thus are anti-revolutionary. And I certainly was one of them, but I care to be not any more.
I want to end this post with three worthwhile short reading exercises and one song, all of them touches some of the points I was talking about:
- Stalin – Marxism versus Liberalism – An interview with H.G. Wells – 23 July 1934 [6]
- Mao Tse-tung – Combat Liberalism – 7 September 1937 [7]
- M.N. Roy – On Non-Violence and the Masses – 10 November 1923 [8]
- Against Me! – Baby, I’m an Anarchist [9]
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totalitarianism
[3] Friedrich Engels – Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany
[4] e.g. Venezuela: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Documentary)
[5] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm
[6] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1934/07/23.htm
[7] https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm
[8] https://www.marxists.org/archive/roy/1923/11/10.htm
[9] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVldfXHFlCU