I think that the Socialist-Left was pretty humanitarian. The thing is, the Marxists were overthrowing the Capitalists for all the right reasons. They were humanitarian, and also idealists.
How is it that the entire ideology fell? They were doing everything for the right reasons.. and were so passionate about it. They gained quite a lot of support for the workers revolution.
We, the Anarcho-Capitalists, on the other hand are outnumbered.
This might give you an idea.
I can’t tell if the OP is sarcastic. The Bolshevik revolutionaries were far from humanitarians. The whole thing began with the murder of the royal family which should give you a clue of what kind of people they were.
Here’s a good article on collectivist revolutions:
Define humanitarian. Also, I contend that any Marxist principals, in the honor of its founder, are humanitarian in the slightest, if you were to read the manifesto, you actually see very little care about the proletariat per se.. Also, there was very little “capitalism” in Russia. Furthermore most socialist leftists are not what I would call particularaly humanitarians in general
The Boshleviks didn’t actualy have much direct support as such, most Russians were dirt poor peasants who really had no idea what was going on in to Moscow and later were just fairly happy to cling on to a new promise. As for the ideology itself, besides being unpracticle one could really just make the case that the man of steel just kind of came in and took it over and then everything was f***ed
Beware of humanitarians with the GULAG.
Most of the peasants were for Social Revolutionaries who were more popular than the Bolsheviks by far. Bolsheviks in reality came to power via a coup d’etat following the weakness of the government after Kerensky-Kornilov split and not in a revolution. The famous October Revolution was actually a fairly uneventful and bloodless event. Initially they were really only able to maintain power because A.) the rest of the leftists were paralysed due to fear that any instability would be taken advantage of by “reactionaries” whom they disliked far more than the Bolsheviks, B.) a campaign of terror in Moscow and the capital and finally C.) a widespread belief that Germany was behind them. Until the fall of 1918 they did not even have a reliable, organised fighting force and had to for the most part rely on nationalist Latvian Riflemen.
No. Not even close.
Marxism is the explicit rejection of morality in social organization. The socialists always lost the moral argument so Marx rejected it altogether. According to Marx socialism is neither moral nor immoral. It is simply inevitable. Anyone who looked at socialism as humanitarian would have been immediately denounced as utopian.
Indeed, the coming society would be so different from others (in that it would lack classes) that long held ideals like truth or good would cease to exist. i wonder if postmodern philosophy would not have been favored under the USSR.
Anarcho-Syndicalists and socialists base their ideals on the care for other individuals. The Capitalists own the means of production, and enslave the working class via employment. Thus, Chattel-Slavery.
The Capitalists then take the product and sell it for less value then the labor used to produce it. Syndicalists care about human flesh and blood. Business usually offer shitty health care and force the chattel slaves to work in shitty conditions. This interferes with the pursuit of happiness.
“One can, of course, take the position that we don’t care about the problems people face today, and want to think about a possible tomorrow. OK, but then don’t pretend to have any interest in human beings and their fate, and stay in the seminar room and intellectual coffee house with other privileged people. Or one can take a much more humane position: I want to work, today, to build a better society for tomorrow – the classical anarchist position, quite different from the slogans in the question. That’s exactly right, and it leads directly to support for the people facing problems today: for enforcement of health and safety regulation, provision of national health insurance, support systems for people who need them, etc. That is not a sufficient condition for organizing for a different and better future, but it is a necessary condition. Anything else will receive the well-merited contempt of people who do not have the luxury to disregard the circumstances in which they live, and try to survive.” - Noam Chomsky
Socialists are workers who advocate a free society, where they wouldn’t have be exploited by workers as slaves. They are activists.
We the Anarcho-Capitalists are just academians.
Very few socialists theorists are actually workers. Many are bourgeois who felt guilt over their accumulated wealth or like Fourier, blame the world for their incompetence or ignorance.
By the way, I should point out that the Bolsheviki were outnumbered too. They merely gained control of Petrograd, which was the capital, with a small group of insurgents.
Thank you von Vodka
Here’s a nice passage from that article:
“The idea of concentrated government power — force against persons — is easy to grasp. And it is easy to imagine that this power can be used to force equality upon unequal persons. Possibly this explains why so many persons believe that the world could be near perfect if only they had the power of government to force other people to do what they think best for them. That concept of government is, however, the direct road to despotism. Any person who holds it is, by definition, a would-be dictator: one who desires to make mankind over in his own image — to force other persons to follow his concepts of morality, economics, social relationships, and government. The fact that such would-be dictators may seem to have fine intentions, and wish only to do good for the people, does not justify their arrogant desire to have authority over others.”
How many of us are actually workers? I’m tired of getting bitched at by people for my opinions because I don’t have a job or have worked in a union so I can’t have any say about “Corporate/Market profit being perfectly fine”.
My last job started at minimum wage. I ended up in management.
“There are no lousy jobs, only men too lousy to do them.”
Yes, and the mother who drowns her children does it because she cares about them.
50% of the American public are “capitalists” (they own capital). This term has lost all relevance. It is a tool of obfuscation employed by socialists who cannot defend their already refuted doctrines. It incites images of fat and greedy men with black top hats whose profitability was entirely contingent upon government privilege.
The LTV has been refuted; subjectivism holds.
Anarcho-capitalists reject the exploitation theory of interest.
I don’t think he’s talking about you personally. But that most socialists, statistically, are state socialist petit-bourgeois. Very small number are workers… much less anarcho-syndicalist workers. While it’s true that anarchist socialists may have worker concerns and (some sort of methodology of) freedom in mind, most socialists today do not. That’s the sad state of anarchism that applies to ancaps and any other type of anarchist.
Are you implying that there aren’t any Anarcho-Syndicalists now who have held jobs? They suck. The Capitalists don’t need to own every damn thing, but they do, because they are greedy. I can’t even get my own coffee now, because it was taken by a Capitalist. More monopolies = harder to get away from being employed.
Explain to me how the fact that the Labour Theory of Value has been refuted is indicative that anarcho-syndicalists have not held jobs. That seems like a leap of logic that would do Neil Armstrong proud.
You can often gain support for doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Most people see statist measures as the only way one can rectify a situation.