Metal Reviews

Good answer you really won me over!

Oh boohoo, feeling overly serious are we?

I have to get my serious hat on if I'm to keep up with your logic!

That's odd. Usually people take their hats off to my reasoning and intellect, not on.

What the hell kind of company do you keep?

Mostly progressive-minded youngsters who are unable to back up their critique (or, more likely, insults) of conservatism or nationalism with intelligent and well-founded reasoning. I'm far from well-versed in the area of political studies, but I'm constantly reading. Roger Scruton's works, for the moment.

Ok, fine, but why don't you back up your own critique of left wing ideas? Unless anybody here is actually advocating Stalinism or Maoism, then going on about "120 million killed by Marxism" without ever elaborating doesn't really cut it... they are just the same type of political taglines that you probably hear from your friends.

Well, isn't the dialectic approach to human existence that is inherent in Marxism that which legitimates violent revolutions by various Marxist ideologies?

um

AIPAC

seriously if that doesn't fit your definition of a gigantic fucking lobbying corporation then I don't know what to do with you, bro.

re: Goat- trotsky was a eurocentric twat with few reasonable ideas. Support for the protestors should not be conflated with support for Moussavi, and Iran's history leads me to believe that actual, literal, outside intervention from Europe or the USA will just make a terrible situation worse.

re: Karmakosmonaut - Rio is not for violent revolution, so it would be better to address me on that aspect, as I still believe it holds some water for certain situations.

myself, I agree in a very real sense with the conclusion reached by many: committing to nonviolence in the midst of violence perpetrated by the country that you reside in and pay taxes to, is itself a form of violence. Similarly, there are people who are at base corrupt; these corrupters of life deserve precisely what they have been dealing out to others for years. I would not shed the slightest tear if, say, Phil Knight was stabbed to death in a dark alleyway, or if Max Baucus fell off a cliff. It would be only just.

If you disagree with what I'm saying, then be aware that the reverse is just as bad. Capitalism causes millions of deaths; this is undeniable. The first-world way of life is balanced on the backs of the citizens of the third-world; do you deny this? If you do not, then why is it that people in Africa have to starve to death so you can have nice cheap coffee, or that people in Indonesia have to work in sweatshops so you can buy cheap sneakers? What approach to human existence do you have that all this is justified by whatever philosophy of life you have?

In what possible mode of thinking is the blood of all these people not on the hands of every person who lives in the first world, including myself and Goat and probably a majority of people on the internet right now?

You speak of '120 million deaths as a result of Marxist regimes.' For one, you should probably change that to 'Marxist-Leninist-Maoist regimes,' since there has never been what anyone would call an ideologically pure Marxist state. Second, Care to source that? In the meantime why don't I name the figure of every death caused by imperialism and capitalism? How many do you think that is? Want to take a stab? I'd say it's much higher than 120 million; wouldn't you?

Differentiate between pro-Israel lobby and a Jewish lobby.

given the stances of like 99% of my compatriots concerning Israel, a pro-Israel lobby is a Jewish lobby, if we are to assume 'Jewish lobby' means 'a lobby made up of a lot of Jews that safeguard what most people view as Jewish interests.' if it means like, a lobby that tries to make Chanukah a national holiday or some shit then I guess there aren't any...?

oh, and about Che Guevara: Does LBJ's horrible disgusting foreign policy that resulted in god-knows how many deaths mean that his Great Society reforms and Civil Rights Act/Voting Rights Act were bad things? Does murdering people or being racist mean your views are automatically invalid or based entirely on the fact that you like murdering people or are a racist?

Dead Machine!

"Trotsky was a Eurocentric twat"

Bloody hell.

"I still believe it holds some water for certain situations"

Bloody, bloody hell. Reasonable ideas, eh?

The citizens of Africa don't HAVE TO starve to death so I can have cheap coffee, blaming me the consumer for what a corporation does elsewhere is ridiculous. I'm extremely careful about what I buy in supermarkets, as plenty of people are. Blaming third-world deaths on first-world citizenry is only true up to a point, and whilst I'm perfectly capable of liberal guilt, going on to use that as a fucking excuse for revolutionary bloodshed is little short of psychotic. You're like the Palestinian terrorists who use the suffering of their countrymen as an excuse to kill and maim; the majority of the people themselves want peace, not more violence.

(Obviously the difference being you haven't set any bombs off yet)

I admit, saying 'Trotsky was a eurocentric twat,' is something of an oversimplification that uses inflammatory language. Do I stand by the statement? Yes.

so what, violence is never justified? When one side deals in violence, the other side must never ever even think of harming a fly? Yeah, see how well that works for Africans. There's a reason that communist insurgencies start in the third world.

I have no idea whatsoever how you would presume to remove an institution that depends on violence, lives on violence, drinks violence like some people quaff Coca-Cola, without using any violence whatsoever. Ask the Palestinians how well that works when Israel receives billions in military cash from the U.S. every year and at the slightest provocation will rampage into their territory and drop bombs onto children.

EDIT- as for 'blaming the consumer for the corporations' actions...' the consumer is responsible for the corporations actions just like a voter is responsible for the actions of a political party. If I live in England and I vote BNP, I am voting for ethnic cleansing. If I purchase coca-cola, I am giving the fucking thumbs-up to their policies; I am saying 'what coca-cola is doing right now doesn't matter to me as long as I can enjoy the fresh, delicious taste of an ice-cold coca-cola! Coca-cola enjoy!'

Heh, fair enough re Trotsky. And violence v nonviolence is not an issue that can be solved via simple yes/no situations... nonviolence is the ideal, but all too often violence slots into that primitive part of mankind's brain. I'm far from Christian, but when whoever it was said that those that live by the sword, shall die by the sword was dead on. Violence begets violence, a violent revolution will become bogged down in trying to protect its own power rather than the rights of the people... it just doesn't work. Mankind can do better. Until people realise that, guess what? Wrath of the Baath.

How would I remove a violent regime without violence? Hm, well, actual nonviolence might be a start, and no, Palestine is not an example of that.

Your edit? Well, understanding why people voted for the BNP and working to make sure that they have no reason to do so again might be more use than, say, bombing the BNP headquarters. Are the voters responsible for getting the BNP into power? Sure, that's obvious. But is it their fault? Hm, that's the question.

Of course. The question is whether or not the sword is the answer; sometimes it is. You're mistaking 'a violent revolution' for 'a vanguard party,' which historically speaking (with thanks to rio for pointing this out) always protects its own power after the revolution, and is little more than a transition of power from capitalists to intellectuals.

And where can you find an example of the removal of a violent regime with nonviolence, aside from India?

Who is responsible for the BNP getting into power if not the people who voted for them? Is it the BNP themselves, who have worked hard to repackage their neo-fascism as friendly ultranationalism? Ultimately it is the fault of class divisions and the BNP is just exploiting the inevitable ideologies that come packaged with class divisions, yes.

But what will make sure people will never vote for the BNP again? That's an excellent question. What will make sure that scared white working-class people don't vote for a party that is tailor-made for them?

According to some, but I disagree.

The dialectic is a philosophical and analytical method, which is not exclusive to Marx. It essentially says that societies are characterised by constant motion, and that the conditions that change a society are those internal to it. In Marx's analysis, those conditions are the capitalist system that causes irreconcilable tensions between.

It's a way of viewing society philosophically. Setting aside the actual practical contexts of these totalitarian "Marxist" regimes, the turbulence in the international system that surrounded them, the internal ruptions that followed them, to focus on one methodological concept seems crazy to me.

If we are to find something that can apply to those regimes that is supposedly inherent to Marxism, it is surely the idea of violent revolution itself. Or even maybe not violent revolution, but simply the act of sudden political change that is imposed by a minority group. This clearly doesn't apply to only nominally Marxist regimes. Any situation in which a political change has been imposed suddenly requires an anti-democratic aspect. (e.g. the imposition of neoliberalism in Russia or many Latin American countries). That's a much better explanation than pointing to the dialectic method.

Like DM says, I am not for violent revolution at all. But I would still consider myself a Marxist, generally speaking. Because, I believe that you can reject the revolutionary prescription (which, after all, is very underdeveloped in Marx's work, and a tiny percentage of his writing), but agree with (the majority of) his analysis of capitalism.

DM, I've never quite understood the deification of Trotsky in some quarters, but could you explain the "eurocentric twat" allegation?

For starters, most of his writing was on Russia, which isn't really a European country.

I'd argue that all the early Marxists (aside from Marx himself, who was eurocentric per se by the time of his death) were eurocentric; the first truly non-eurocentric marxist philosophy was, in fact, Maoism, as it did not hold that society had to develop through *industrial capitalism to reach socialism as Europe and America had.

EDIT- forgot a word*

He did have that orthodox "staged" interpretation of Marxism, but he also focused on developing world issues quite a lot, and was very keen on the issue of independence for colonies as a campaigning issue. But, no, he didn't think a Marxist revolution could be based on the peasantry, which leads to a focus on the industrial world, that's true.

One book of Trotsky's writing I have ("The Age of Permanent Revolution", ed. Isaac Deutshcer) contains an article called "prospects and tasks in the Far East", that I can't seem to find online (although it must be there somewhere). He talks about the "seedbed of revolution" shifting to the East, wound up with "progressive" nationalist struggles. This was in the early-mid 1920s. He was also very critical of the European labour movement in this period, seeing it as docile and subservient.

*shrug* I suppose this has more than one side; but I think his clinging to that particular ideal cements him as eurocentric; personally I hadn't read that particular book of his.