• WhoaSlowDownMaurice [they/them, undecided]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Monarchs have been killing each other and their rivals to the throne, often including women and children and family members, for literally thousands of years, but no-one cares when they do it.

    But noooooo, when a COMMUNIST does it, it's suddenly the worst thing ever?

    • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Countless worker and peasant children died in brutal conditions prior to the revolution, and to care less about them than a few spoiled Russian princelings is myopic. That's what I'd say to a liberal.

      But we're communists here. Or at least we say we are. We should strive to learn from and overcome the atrocities of the past, not repeat them. Certainly not revel in glorifying them.

      • jabrd [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Communism would be recognizing the material conditions that lead to revolution and understanding that any situation that results in a storming of the palace will necessarily produce the violence which kills the royal family (or whoever sits atop the political hierarchy). Morality is not a factor in understanding the unfolding of history

        • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          Morality is not a factor in understanding the unfolding of history

          Insert the Marx quote about changing the world rather than simply interpreting it here.

          Insert the Paulo Freire quote about how without liberatory education the oppressed dream of becoming oppressors beneath it.

          Look, the Romanov kids are a century dead and no amount of monday-morning quarterbacking will change what happened. And if it had to happen for the political or military survival of the revolution, then so be it. But I'd like to think that people nominally comitted to creating a better world would engage with what happened and try to think of how things could be done better next time, instead of just gleefully celebrating kids' deaths or saying, "well that's history for you."

          • jabrd [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            I keep trying to write out long and thoughtful responses but I just keep coming back to the fact that that’s bourgeois morality. A mass class political action will form its own moral boundaries separate from what you envision is acceptable in this time and moment. And I don’t even necessarily disagree with you along moral lines, but I’m also a subject of petty bourgeois morality so of course I don’t. In a moment of revolution the proletariat will decide their moral lines in the moment and we will have no voice to tell them one way or the other

            • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
              ·
              edit-2
              4 years ago

              A mass class political action will form its own moral boundaries separate from what you envision is acceptable in this time and moment.

              Of course it will, and for the record I'm not even condmening the soldiers who did the killing. I understand it was done in the context of a chaotic moment, and that none of us have any way of knowing what was going through the soldiers' heads as they confronted these living embodiments of their oppression.

              What frustrates me about this post is that it doesn't seem to be about understanding those soldiers in that morally complicated situation, it seems to just be about celebrating violence for violence's sake. I know we're all powerless and tramautized and would all love to shove our bosses feet-first into a woodchipper, but I'd like to think there's a difference between celebrating kings getting theirs and kids getting merked.

              In a moment of revolution the proletariat will decide their moral lines in the moment and we will have no voice to tell them one way or the other

              We are the proletariat, man. I really hope that if any kind of revolution happens in our lifetimes, our moral lines will exclude killing Jeff Bezos' grandkids.

              Edit: Unless those grandkids are old enough to be scumbag billionaires in their own right, in which case :gui-better: :gui-better: :gui-better:

              • jabrd [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                :cat-confused: are we really going to do this? A proletarian revolution will not be fascist in nature despite its actions solely because it will be on the behalf of the proletariat, rather than in service of bourgeois or petty bourgeois social formations. Hate to break it to you but Parenti was right that a secret police are necessary regardless of anyone’s moral disagreements to them. Torture is terrible and yet it’s still happened across most every given historical socialist project. Disavowing a socialist project because it doesn’t fit your moral sensibilities is just carrying water for imperialism

                The revolution will not solve all of society’s ills by the next day. You will never live to see your perfect imagined society even if you somehow live to see the global people’s revolution

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Killing? The far worst part is the generations of pedophilia and incest.

      Shit like the Habsburgs should be the only proof of how primitive and disgusting these supposed "enlightened" individuals actually were.

      The gene pool eventually became so small that the last of the Spanish line, Charles II, who was severely disabled from birth, perhaps by genetic disorders, possessed a genome comparable to that of a child born to a brother and sister, as did his father, probably because of "remote inbreeding".

      Few things make me more angry then thinking about how there was a time humanity looked up to and endorsed(regardless of choice) these monsters. Talk about primitive stupid monkeys. Ugh.

      • FidelCashflow [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Worse it was probably an improvement.

        A fully inbred king could be controlled by his court pretty well. Probably allowed them to check some of their worse impulses by giveing them a sugar sculpture to eat

        • FidelCastro [he/him]
          hexagon
          M
          ·
          4 years ago

          Pretty sure it just meant you had an even more unstable tyrant.

          Source: I've had a fuckton of really stupid and abusive bosses.

        • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Sure until they collectively decide the 52yo bed ridden King suffering from multiple genetic diseases should fuck his 10yo sister because they are all anxious there is no heir yet...

          I feel that when it comes to running a country a committee made by degenerates and mostly old incompetent men are about as useful as some random old guy that can't count to 10.