It would take only the most cursory examination of documented revolutions, communist ones as much as any other to immediately see that that’s not the case. Millions get swept up in it. People starve, civil and international wars are fought and combatants die, civilians become collateral damage, power struggles emerge within the ranks of the revolutionaries and loyal partisans are swept aside so ambitious people can ascend. Revolutionary zeal leads to countless cases of misidentification of suspected ‘reactionaries’, economic turmoil creates desperation leading to violence and crime and then further violence in the attempts to restore order. In the chaos and lawlessness of the initial stages of a revolution people will take the opportunity to settle old scores. Individuals who previously held no power now take up new roles in the new society and wield even tiny petty amounts of power yet still more than they could have dreamed of before and turn out not to be responsible with it and others still manage to claim masses of it.
And this is only the people who you would hopefully agree didn’t ‘deserve’ it, but for me on a personal level, though it does make me rather useless I suppose, I’m not in to killing, so even those who arguably did ‘deserve’ it, the ‘ruling’ classes, I may be glad to see them stripped of the privilege and influence but I don’t want to see them or anyone strung up. And in the period of re-defining and re-shaping society after the revolution the new order will seek to identify just who counts as ‘ruling class’, this has, in the past included people who owned a shop, people with ‘bourgeois’ jobs in the former government, teachers accused by students of being ‘reactionaries’.
It might just be that communism really can, if not de-railed create a utopia on Earth and it might just be that all that happens above really is actually what just needs to happen for us to get there, but I’m not sure I could stomach it.
I don’t agree with such extremes, such as the executions of landlords etc.
This, I have to admit, is my one sticking point in actually calling myself a communist. This one question has tortured me for a long time:
What do you actually DO about the reactionaries and counter revolutionaries?
The USSR sent them to gulags. That seems harsh, but it’s something. Mao’s China killed them, and I’m sure similar things happened in Cuba.
There has to be an option that doesn’t scare people or cause horror in general, but I don’t think I personally have a perfect answer. I could say, “the average person won’t be mistaken for a bourgeois,” but I don’t know how convincing that will be. The revolution would have to be truly perfect for that to happen.
What I can say, though, is that Marxists of the present day recognise and condemn these actions, and the Marxist tradition teaches us to constantly reevaluate our methods, in the scientific discipline of observation, experiment, reflection and so on. It’s a cold way to put it, but the mistakes of the past have been carefully studied to ensure they can’t happen again.
That doesn’t mean new mistakes can’t happen. We are only human, and even democratic will can run foul. But we can use our knowledge of material conditions to measure our approach. Only ever what the people want - and what we want is justice for all.
It would take only the most cursory examination of documented revolutions, communist ones as much as any other to immediately see that that’s not the case. Millions get swept up in it. People starve, civil and international wars are fought and combatants die, civilians become collateral damage, power struggles emerge within the ranks of the revolutionaries and loyal partisans are swept aside so ambitious people can ascend. Revolutionary zeal leads to countless cases of misidentification of suspected ‘reactionaries’, economic turmoil creates desperation leading to violence and crime and then further violence in the attempts to restore order. In the chaos and lawlessness of the initial stages of a revolution people will take the opportunity to settle old scores. Individuals who previously held no power now take up new roles in the new society and wield even tiny petty amounts of power yet still more than they could have dreamed of before and turn out not to be responsible with it and others still manage to claim masses of it.
And this is only the people who you would hopefully agree didn’t ‘deserve’ it, but for me on a personal level, though it does make me rather useless I suppose, I’m not in to killing, so even those who arguably did ‘deserve’ it, the ‘ruling’ classes, I may be glad to see them stripped of the privilege and influence but I don’t want to see them or anyone strung up. And in the period of re-defining and re-shaping society after the revolution the new order will seek to identify just who counts as ‘ruling class’, this has, in the past included people who owned a shop, people with ‘bourgeois’ jobs in the former government, teachers accused by students of being ‘reactionaries’.
It might just be that communism really can, if not de-railed create a utopia on Earth and it might just be that all that happens above really is actually what just needs to happen for us to get there, but I’m not sure I could stomach it.
I don’t agree with such extremes, such as the executions of landlords etc.
This, I have to admit, is my one sticking point in actually calling myself a communist. This one question has tortured me for a long time:
What do you actually DO about the reactionaries and counter revolutionaries?
The USSR sent them to gulags. That seems harsh, but it’s something. Mao’s China killed them, and I’m sure similar things happened in Cuba.
There has to be an option that doesn’t scare people or cause horror in general, but I don’t think I personally have a perfect answer. I could say, “the average person won’t be mistaken for a bourgeois,” but I don’t know how convincing that will be. The revolution would have to be truly perfect for that to happen.
What I can say, though, is that Marxists of the present day recognise and condemn these actions, and the Marxist tradition teaches us to constantly reevaluate our methods, in the scientific discipline of observation, experiment, reflection and so on. It’s a cold way to put it, but the mistakes of the past have been carefully studied to ensure they can’t happen again.
That doesn’t mean new mistakes can’t happen. We are only human, and even democratic will can run foul. But we can use our knowledge of material conditions to measure our approach. Only ever what the people want - and what we want is justice for all.