You realize that getting upset over this isn’t helping to prove your point, right? If anything, it proves you’re out of arguments and you think you can bully me into into accepting your point of view.
Sorry, not going to happen.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Marx passionately and repeatedly made the case that violence and inequality in a capitalist system are intrinsically connected, i.e. that a capitalist system requires violence in order to enforce and maintain the inequality that is present. But you (and Marx) also say that communists can (and should) violence to bring about equality.
My question, therefore, is simply this: if inequality is the result of violence, how can communism ever hope to achieve equality in the future by using the same means that it claims causes inequality in the present? That’s simply fighting fire with fire. If their violence justifies our violence, our violence will justify theirs. And on and on it goes. No amount of violence will ever stop violence. It just won’t.
This is why I’m frustrated - you work entirely on the assumption that violence is an integral part of communism, but that’s really not the case, at least not in a way distinct from how it can be necessary to maintain stability in any other system. For example, physically restraining a murderer to arrest them is appropriate, but that is not as a result of communism or capitalism, but as a functional requirement for the prevention of further violence.
While moving from one political system to another frequently involves violence, that doesn’t mean it’s an integral part of the system itself. For example, the transition to democracy from absolute monarchy involved violence in almost every example, but violence isn’t part of democracy itself.
But my frustration isn’t that you don’t have the same point of view as me - in fact I’ve actively avoided stating my own stance on economic systems - it’s that you repeatedly use strawman arguments to avoid actually engaging with the economic concepts themselves.
violence and inequality in a capitalist system are intrinsically connected
You got this right, in that the idea is that inequality is enforced through violence. But you assume there’s some consensus on when it should be used to push back against inequality, and you inexplicably seem to believe that this consensus is “always”. But this really isn’t the case.
That’s where you wrong, because violence IS part of democracy, since the majority gets to inflict its will on the minority (or at least choose representatives who will do so on their behalf) via the use of the police, who are authorized to use any violence necessary in order to get people to comply with the laws.
If communism doesn’t have any plans for achieving their goals without the use of police (or violent enforcers by any other name), then it stands to reason that it will just be violence-based as that which is it seeks to replace, and therefore just as prone to causing inequality among people, regardless of its intentions.
As I said before, violence will never lead to peace, at best you will get a temporary truce whenever people are tired of fighting. But it will always be prone to erupt again. That’s why I don’t support communism. And yes, I don’t support democracy, monarchy, or dictatorship either, for the same reason.
You’re working on the assumption that violence just creates random inequality whenever it occurs, rather than that the use of violence in our current system is a tool used with intent to maintain the status quo.
Deciding we shouldn’t make any change to our economic system because police would still be necessary is, frankly, an absurd stance to take. To be clear, communism is not an alternative to democracy, it’s an economic not political system, though of course its ideals do align with democracy.
So you don’t support any political system? Or do you have some magic solution in which everyone magically lives in harmony?
![[META] Never change, lemmy.ml](https://i.imgur.com/1pxAyiq.jpg){kind=link}
You realize that getting upset over this isn’t helping to prove your point, right? If anything, it proves you’re out of arguments and you think you can bully me into into accepting your point of view.
Sorry, not going to happen.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought Marx passionately and repeatedly made the case that violence and inequality in a capitalist system are intrinsically connected, i.e. that a capitalist system requires violence in order to enforce and maintain the inequality that is present. But you (and Marx) also say that communists can (and should) violence to bring about equality.
My question, therefore, is simply this: if inequality is the result of violence, how can communism ever hope to achieve equality in the future by using the same means that it claims causes inequality in the present? That’s simply fighting fire with fire. If their violence justifies our violence, our violence will justify theirs. And on and on it goes. No amount of violence will ever stop violence. It just won’t.
This is why I’m frustrated - you work entirely on the assumption that violence is an integral part of communism, but that’s really not the case, at least not in a way distinct from how it can be necessary to maintain stability in any other system. For example, physically restraining a murderer to arrest them is appropriate, but that is not as a result of communism or capitalism, but as a functional requirement for the prevention of further violence.
While moving from one political system to another frequently involves violence, that doesn’t mean it’s an integral part of the system itself. For example, the transition to democracy from absolute monarchy involved violence in almost every example, but violence isn’t part of democracy itself.
But my frustration isn’t that you don’t have the same point of view as me - in fact I’ve actively avoided stating my own stance on economic systems - it’s that you repeatedly use strawman arguments to avoid actually engaging with the economic concepts themselves.
You got this right, in that the idea is that inequality is enforced through violence. But you assume there’s some consensus on when it should be used to push back against inequality, and you inexplicably seem to believe that this consensus is “always”. But this really isn’t the case.
That’s where you wrong, because violence IS part of democracy, since the majority gets to inflict its will on the minority (or at least choose representatives who will do so on their behalf) via the use of the police, who are authorized to use any violence necessary in order to get people to comply with the laws.
If communism doesn’t have any plans for achieving their goals without the use of police (or violent enforcers by any other name), then it stands to reason that it will just be violence-based as that which is it seeks to replace, and therefore just as prone to causing inequality among people, regardless of its intentions.
As I said before, violence will never lead to peace, at best you will get a temporary truce whenever people are tired of fighting. But it will always be prone to erupt again. That’s why I don’t support communism. And yes, I don’t support democracy, monarchy, or dictatorship either, for the same reason.
You’re working on the assumption that violence just creates random inequality whenever it occurs, rather than that the use of violence in our current system is a tool used with intent to maintain the status quo.
Deciding we shouldn’t make any change to our economic system because police would still be necessary is, frankly, an absurd stance to take. To be clear, communism is not an alternative to democracy, it’s an economic not political system, though of course its ideals do align with democracy.
So you don’t support any political system? Or do you have some magic solution in which everyone magically lives in harmony?