LWDT VI: Kropotkin's Bread Dead Redemption.

[Democratic Communist Federation]

The global population is materially better off than at almost any other time in history and has begun to address many of Marx's most profound criticisms of capitalism. I'd argue that if we could combine this material prosperity with a re-invigoration of certain traditional institutions and mores, adjusted to accommodate certain newer mores, that we'd find our lives quite blissful and see no need for revolution at all. Evolution has had less bloody results.

I was referring to the growing nuclear club and the fact that, due to capitalist greed, we are destroying the only planet we have through climate change.

[Fahran]

I was referring to the growing nuclear club and the fact that, due to capitalist greed, we are destroying the only planet we have through climate change.

Both of those things would still happen even without capitalism.

[Communist Xomaniax]

So religious teachings about social justice, and saints who cared for the poor, only cared about the "rights of the powerful." that sounds quite bizarre.

Clergy historically has played a very important role in the reinforcement of tyrannical governments so yes, they absolutely only care for the rights of the powerful. Giving the downtrodden a kind word and a bit of food means nothing when you're actively helping the very same social systems that perpetuate their repression. The words in the bible are worthless if the people in charge of interpreting, expanding upon, and proselytizing them are themselves entrenched in an unfair system.

[Aellex]

was the ancien regime becoming more constitutional and more democratic?

It was becoming less autocratic but not out of any "democraticisation", it just was due to Louis XVI being an incompetent fuck.
It wasn't becoming more constitutional neither.

[Fahran]

It was becoming less autocratic but not out of any "democraticisation", it just was due to Louis XVI being an incompetent fuck.
It wasn't becoming more constitutional neither.

It became less autocratic under Louis XV as well though. After the revolution, you had factions like the Orleanists who were far more liberal. It's not inconceivable that they could have emerged independent of a revolution, especially given the increasing influence of Enlightenment Ideals in Europe in the nineteenth century.

Clergy historically has played a very important role in the reinforcement of tyrannical governments so yes, they absolutely only care for the rights of the powerful. Giving the downtrodden a kind word and a bit of food means nothing when you're actively helping the very same social systems that perpetuate their repression. The words in the bible are worthless if the people in charge of interpreting, expanding upon, and proselytizing them are themselves entrenched in an unfair system.

> Supporting Revolutionary France
> Opposing tyrannical governments
Choose one and only one.

[Aellex]

We didn't appoint a king, and Haiti freed the slaves more so than France.

No bulli plz, Aellex.

We crowned an emperor not because of his birth but rather for his merit.
Haïti also dabbled in planned, willed and organized actual genocide unlike us.

[United Muscovite Nations]

So religious teachings about social justice, and saints who cared for the poor, only cared about the "rights of the powerful." that sounds quite bizarre.

Clergy historically has played a very important role in the reinforcement of tyrannical governments so yes, they absolutely only care for the rights of the powerful. Giving the downtrodden a kind word and a bit of food means nothing when you're actively helping the very same social systems that perpetuate their repression. The words in the bible are worthless if the people in charge of interpreting, expanding upon, and proselytizing them are themselves entrenched in an unfair system.

The problem with that reasoning is that you're retroactively applying reasoning for one form of government that developed in very different conditions. No matter how hard you tried, it would have been impossible for, say, the Byzantine Empire to transform into a modern republic or a socialist country.

Also, most clergy are pretty low in economic class.

[Fahran]

We crowned an emperor not because of his birth but rather for his merit.

Merit.

Haïti also dabbled in planned, willed and organized actual genocide unlike us.

So you're arguing that the former colony had a better system of organization than the republic? :^)

[Proctopeo]

In another century, they might have pried numerous concessions from the political establishment.

"Hey guys you just gotta put up with being oppressed for a few more generations, maybe after you're all dead the elites will toss your kids a few bones"

"Hey gamers guys let's rise up and either commit a massacre or be the victims of a massacre because a book by some old dead dude told us that it will be better for everyone, even though other old dead dudes proved otherwise with their actions! surely it won't fail this time!"

[Aellex]

It became less autocratic under Louis XV as well though. After the revolution, you had factions like the Orleanists who were far more liberal. It's not inconceivable that they could have emerged independent of a revolution, especially given the increasing influence of Enlightenment Ideals in Europe in the nineteenth century.

"La Poire" tried to play on Liberalism and shit as a way to get himself more popular with the population after he essentially coup-Ed his place as a King but it didn't gain him any favour with anyone. Had the revolutions (the both of them) not happened, no such faction as Orleanists would have appeared anyway as his rise was permitted and dependent on them.

[Aellex]

Merit.

Well, we got to burn Moscou unlike the Germans at least.

So you're arguing that the former colony had a better system of organization than the republic? :^)

When it cames to killing people for their skin color? Sure thing, we tried to limit ourselves to actual traitors unlike them.

[Communist Xomaniax]

"Hey guys you just gotta put up with being oppressed for a few more generations, maybe after you're all dead the elites will toss your kids a few bones"

"Hey gamers guys let's rise up and either commit a massacre or be the victims of a massacre because a book by some old dead dude told us that it will be better for everyone, even though other old dead dudes proved otherwise with their actions! surely it won't fail this time!"

low effort, limp energy, verbose, and cringy meme humor. 2/10

[Communist Xomaniax]

They died in larger numbers as a result of malice and incompetence after the revolution. Again, 50,000 were murdered during the Terror,

The murder of reactionaries means nothing but a good night's sleep to me, save me your tears.

millions died in the Napoleonic Wars,

The revolutionary wars happened because of the tyrannical inbreds of Europe and their refusal to accept that France would no longer be ruled by a literally impotent (lmao) fool. Had the revolutionary wars not happened, Napoleon would never have risen to political prominence. He'd just be another artilleryman.

conditions continued to be bad for many of the urban and rural poor,

That's what war does, yeah

and we got Marxism and Fascism from the mess later on.

The threat of communism and revolution provided teeth to the labor movement and the civil rights movement, which wrenched those very same concessions you fetishistically fawned over earlier in the thread. By your own logic, it wasn't all bad.

If the objective was to minimize deaths, revolution was clearly not the best approach.

Some folks are just plainly ahead of their time.

Not really an argument I was making.

Sure it is. You very enthusiastically defended the deposed royal family against their supposed abuses and you also, just as enthusiastically, opined that it would be better for the people to wait generations for whatever concessions the elites felt like giving them. What about the injustices faced by the common man and perpetrated by the royal system? Why are the revolutionaries all monsters for daring to dream of a better world but the people who were causing the problem in the first place are blameless? The king deserved to die. His wife deserved to die. His kids are unfortunate victims but that's the king's own fault. All he had to do was not be a monarch.

[Proctopeo]

"Hey gamers guys let's rise up and either commit a massacre or be the victims of a massacre because a book by some old dead dude told us that it will be better for everyone, even though other old dead dudes proved otherwise with their actions! surely it won't fail this time!"

low effort, limp energy, verbose, and cringy meme humor. 2/10

Low effort is appropriate when mocking an ideology that requires lots of effort for little true net gain, but took little effort to actually come up with.

[Kubra]

The third estate had equal voting power with the first and second estates. Half the reason the third estate got uppity was precisely because of that: despite being more numerous than both other estates combined, they could be outvoted pretty much all the time.

This does not really refute the argument that they were more powerful under Louis XVI than they were under Louis XIV. The middle-class and the urban poor were rapidly gaining greater political clout. In another century, they might have pried numerous concessions from the political establishment. Even after imprisoning the king, this was still a possibility. The French Revolution was as much about ideology as it was about the concrete interests of the common people.

>The UK
multiple wars and conflicts resulting in the system we know today

The United Kingdom didn't need a genuine revolution (and, no, the Glorious Revolution doesn't count) to achieve their current system. It wasn't Cromwell that created democracy there, in fact that course was reversed as soon as his body went cold, but rather the gradual evolution of the political institutions.

same with Germany, actually. the 1850 constitution was a concession made just 2 years after an very revolutionary period.

Yes, but no lasting revolution actually occurred.

What was gradual about *any* of this, bruv?

We didn't see at five year long bloodbath that killed fifty thousand people and radically altered a society's social structure, institutions, and traditions in a dizzying cycle of revolutions and counter-revolutions. We didn't see the revolution culminated in the appointment of a military dictator who launched a series of wars that killed millions on a scale unmatched until the twentieth century. Really, "organic evolution is a lie" is not really a good argument in favor of revolution.

>rapidly gaining political clout
What, by participating in an assembly in which they had no power whatsoever? You know the implications of "being outvoted pretty much all the time", yeah?
In any case, after they king was imprisoned, the revolution was already on, bruh. What room for gradualism do you find amidst impending war?

>glorious revolution doesn't count
You'd be hard pressed to find a contemporary who did not think the glorious revolution a proper revolution in its own right. The glorious revolution was made in living memory of the civil war, made not 2 decades after, and that english civil war set an interesting precedent: the monarch of the restoration, rather than simply taking the crown as a matter of course, did so by consent of (a new one, mind you) parliament.

>no lasting revolution occurred
oh it most certainly did: the fruit of the revolution was the constitution of prussia. Restrictive as it was, a constitution is a constitution, is it not? And compared to the UK, this constitution gave Prussia universal male suffrage, which the UK was not to have for, well, decades. 1918. The UK, your gradualist darling, never gave all males the right to vote until after the 1st world war. Even Austria of all places had universal male suffrage.

>organic evolution is a lie is not a good argument in favour of revolution
er, if it were the case that 'organic evolution' were a lie, it would most certainly *be* a good argument in favour of revolution, as opposed to the maintenance of an otherwise violent status quo. If it were the case, then you really would need a Napoleon to spread liberalism by the tip of the bayonet.
All I mean to say is that history is a dynamic process, rather than a static movement towards particular states of affairs, and revolution is one such dynamic process within its movement. Revolutions happened, and they figure into how we live today.

[Kubra]

"Hey guys you just gotta put up with being oppressed for a few more generations, maybe after you're all dead the elites will toss your kids a few bones"

"Hey gamers guys let's rise up and either commit a massacre or be the victims of a massacre because a book by some old dead dude told us that it will be better for everyone, even though other old dead dudes proved otherwise with their actions! surely it won't fail this time!"

What great political movements are not precipitated by the readings of old dead dudes, and some old dead women?

[Reikoku]

Clergy historically has played a very important role in the reinforcement of tyrannical governments so yes,

Well, no, that's a grotesque generalization. A poor local parish priest in medieval Europe was not a powerful mastermind upholding the class system. To speak of the "clergy" as some sort of unified class is rather ridiculous. Buddhist priests in medieval Japan frequently wrote about the tyranny and corruption that was displayed by the shogun and his family, although they often had to hide their criticism through historical references.

they absolutely only care for the rights of the powerful. Giving the downtrodden a kind word and a bit of food means nothing when you're actively helping the very same social systems that perpetuate their repression.

Or that the clergy had no recourse to some other system besides the feudal state and couldn't imagine any other system existing for the time period.

The words in the bible are worthless if the people in charge of interpreting, expanding upon, and proselytizing them are themselves entrenched in an unfair system.

The Bible claims to be the word which emanates from an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Being who created the universe and laid out a path of salvation for the human race. Its ultimate worth depends on whether or not its true, no whether its relevant to social justice.

[Kubra]

We didn't appoint a king, and Haiti freed the slaves more so than France.

No bulli plz, Aellex.

We crowned an emperor not because of his birth but rather for his merit.
Haïti also dabbled in planned, willed and organized actual genocide unlike us.

tbf they didn't do so until after Napoleon sent in the poles
Letting Toussaint continue as it were may have not brought back immense sugar profits, but it would have kept the place an otherwise stable french colony with decent revenue.

[West Leas Oros 2]

"Hey gamers guys let's rise up and either commit a massacre or be the victims of a massacre because a book by some old dead dude told us that it will be better for everyone, even though other old dead dudes proved otherwise with their actions! surely it won't fail this time!"

What great political movements are not precipitated by the readings of old dead dudes, and some old dead women?

Adam Smith is an old dead man? :thinking:

[Aellex]

tbf they didn't do so until after Napoleon sent in the poles
Letting Toussaint continue as it were may have not brought back immense sugar profits, but it would have kept the place an otherwise stable french colony with decent revenue.

Won't see me argue on that, reinstating slavery was a mistake and made little sense.

[Reikoku]

We didn't appoint a king, and Haiti freed the slaves more so than France.

No bulli plz, Aellex.

We crowned an emperor not because of his birth but rather for his merit.
Haïti also dabbled in planned, willed and organized actual genocide unlike us.

Actually wasn't it because Napoleon made himself de facto dictator of France and wanted to consolidate his power?

[Fahran]

Well, we got to burn Moscou unlike the Germans at least.

Fair. Honestly though, y'all should have gotten St. Petersburg. That's where all the superficiality in Russian culture was.

When it cames to killing people for their skin color? Sure thing, we tried to limit ourselves to actual traitors unlike them.

I still maintain that Charlotte Corday did nothing wrong and should be heralded as a heroine.

[Kaggeceria]

They died in larger numbers as a result of malice and incompetence after the revolution. Again, 50,000 were murdered during the Terror,

The murder of reactionaries means nothing but a good night's sleep to me, save me your tears.

millions died in the Napoleonic Wars,

The revolutionary wars happened because of the tyrannical inbreds of Europe and their refusal to accept that France would no longer be ruled by a literally impotent (lmao) fool. Had the revolutionary wars not happened, Napoleon would never have risen to political prominence. He'd just be another artilleryman.

conditions continued to be bad for many of the urban and rural poor,

That's what war does, yeah

and we got Marxism and Fascism from the mess later on.

The threat of communism and revolution provided teeth to the labor movement and the civil rights movement, which wrenched those very same concessions you fetishistically fawned over earlier in the thread. By your own logic, it wasn't all bad.

If the objective was to minimize deaths, revolution was clearly not the best approach.

Some folks are just plainly ahead of their time.

Not really an argument I was making.

Sure it is. You very enthusiastically defended the deposed royal family against their supposed abuses and you also, just as enthusiastically, opined that it would be better for the people to wait generations for whatever concessions the elites felt like giving them. What about the injustices faced by the common man and perpetrated by the royal system? Why are the revolutionaries all monsters for daring to dream of a better world but the people who were causing the problem in the first place are blameless? The king deserved to die. His wife deserved to die. His kids are unfortunate victims but that's the king's own fault. All he had to do was not be a monarch.

>actually thinking that all of the people murdered in the terror were reactionaries

Good God, Communists really are historical illiterates.

[Communist Xomaniax]

>actually thinking that all of the people murdered in the terror were reactionaries

Good God, Communists really are historical illiterates.

lmao go be mad somewhere else kiddo

[West Leas Oros 2]

The murder of reactionaries means nothing but a good night's sleep to me, save me your tears.


The revolutionary wars happened because of the tyrannical inbreds of Europe and their refusal to accept that France would no longer be ruled by a literally impotent (lmao) fool. Had the revolutionary wars not happened, Napoleon would never have risen to political prominence. He'd just be another artilleryman.


That's what war does, yeah


The threat of communism and revolution provided teeth to the labor movement and the civil rights movement, which wrenched those very same concessions you fetishistically fawned over earlier in the thread. By your own logic, it wasn't all bad.


Some folks are just plainly ahead of their time.


Sure it is. You very enthusiastically defended the deposed royal family against their supposed abuses and you also, just as enthusiastically, opined that it would be better for the people to wait generations for whatever concessions the elites felt like giving them. What about the injustices faced by the common man and perpetrated by the royal system? Why are the revolutionaries all monsters for daring to dream of a better world but the people who were causing the problem in the first place are blameless? The king deserved to die. His wife deserved to die. His kids are unfortunate victims but that's the king's own fault. All he had to do was not be a monarch.

>actually thinking that all of the people murdered in the terror were reactionaries

Good God, Communists really are historical illiterates.

Only the tankies and the Anarkiddies. The rest are pretty historical.