Quote:
Originally Posted by Rococo
Even if they disagree with all of the basic tenets of Marxism?
So Eric Rudolph was a Marxist, even though one of his professed motives for the Olympic bombing was anger about global socialism?
If you do political terrorism, you don't disagree with all the basic tenets of Marxism, as revolution is one of them.
I wasn't too familiar with the guy you mentioned so i looked it up and i read the rant he wrote , his "political manifesto".
(sorry if the source is bad but this is what wiki linked to, for the full manifesto)
https://www.armyofgod.com/EricRudolphStatement.html
It appears to me that his rant is much more about abortion being legalized than about "global socialism" per se.
He literally talks about the founding fathers rebelling as his moral example to why people should rebel with force if the government passes unjust laws.
He is basically a true believer in the idea of violent revolution even against established democracies if laws that he dislikes enough get passed.
That is indeed marxism 101 and if you change the rant about abortion with a rant about income inequality the piece could be written by any material actual marxist, and you know that.
You also know that some marxists drop the revolution tenet, ask for non-violent ways to achieve socialism/communism, but they are still marxists even without sharing that specific element right? well the same is true if you purse revolution against a democracy for reasons different from those marx wanted to revolt against.
What i ask you to do is to simply sever the connection between specific content asked for by actual material marxists, and the framework for achieving that, and the moral justifications behind the proposed actions.
This is like when people call any organization pursuing violent eugenetics nazist. Even if that organization doesn't have other nazi elements. Because violent eugenetics was one of the defining elements of nazism.
I am asking you to understand that i do the same with marxism, i am not doing something unheard of, crazy, or silly.
I am taking one of the core elements of marxism, the moral justification for politically motivated violent rioting, political terrorism and so on to fix a perceived social injustice, *against established democracies with enshrined classicl liberal constitutional rights* and calling marxist anyone who does that or promotes that.
Seemingly paradoxically, i know, this would make the october revolution non-marxist, and in fact it wasn't . What happend later after the czar was gone was marxism (widespread political violence to pursue the "dream" of a marxist state, and then the establishment of one).
But toppling an anti-democratic regime isn't marxism per se
EDIT: as for the "he was against global socialism so he can't be a marxist" implication of your post, please remind that marxists killed and hated each others in great numbers a lot of times in history.
Last edited by Luciom; 03-21-2024 at 12:07 PM.