However I find myself being disagreed with quite often, mostly for not advocating or cheering violence, “by any means possible” change, or revolutionary tactics. It would seem that I’m not viewed as authentically holding my view unless I advocate extreme, violent, or radical action to accomplish it.

Those seem like two different things to me.

Edit: TO COMMUNISTS, ANARCHISTS, OR ANYONE ELSE CALLING FOR THE OVERTHROW OF SOCIETY

THIS OBVIOUSLY ISN’T MEANT FOR YOU.

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
    717·
    4 months ago

    Many of those have been accomplished by protests, that led to changes in law, that led to changes in society. Some by war, yes.

    None by revolution, that I’m aware of. None by anarchy, that I’m aware of. In most cases revolution seems to throw things the other way, back into slavery, back into repression.

    • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
      421·
      4 months ago

      This is ahistorical, really. Revolution has historically happened in progressive movements beyond brutal previous conditions, whether it be the Haitian Slave Revolt, the French overthrow of the Monarchy, the Russian overthrow of the brutal Tsarist regime, the Cuban revolt against slavery and fascism, and more.

      I think you would do well for yourself by studying history of revolutionary movements.

        • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          27·
          4 months ago

          If you just want to limit it to Haiti, Cuba, and the USSR, then yes each of those revolutions led to a vastly more humane society than the previous one. It also depends on who you’re asking. Tsar Nicholas II certainly didn’t see the Soviet Union as an improvement. Cuban plantation owners with dozens of slaves didn’t see socialism as an improvement. There are winners and losers in history, the losing side usually isn’t going to be pleased.

          And who loses in a revolution? In a successful socialist revolution it’s the capitalist class, colonizers, slavers, the previous bureaucracy, regional landlords. The USSR went from a backwater literal peasant kingdom to a space faring modern country within a single generation, despite a famine and despite the brutal loss of life in WW2. It’s very easy to say the country that sends women to school to become nuclear engineers is not as brutally oppressive as the country with a monarch that forcefully sends women to become nuns. How do you determine oppression? Go look at things like literacy, child mortality, education, home ownership, access to clean water, and what kind of occupations women have. By those metrics, socialist revolutions typically and vastly reduce oppression.

        • Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml
          24·
          4 months ago

          Some have, yes, but of the ones I listed, absolutely not.

          Revolution isn’t an action, it’s a consequence of failing and unsustainable conditions. You don’t do a Revolution, it happens and you can participate in it.

        • MarxMadness@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
          5·
          4 months ago

          I think you are vastly underestimating the horrors of most pre-revolutionary societies, and probably also overestimating what you describe as oppression in post-revoltionary governments.

          On the first point, here’s an excerpt from a JFK speech where he describes pre-revolution Cuba:

          The third, and perhaps most disastrous of our failures, was the decision to give stature and support to one of the most bloody and repressive dictatorships in the long history of Latin American repression. Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years - a greater proportion of the Cuban population than the proportion of Americans who died in both World Wars, and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state - destroying every individual liberty.

          And JFK was no friend of Castro; he greenlit the Bay of Pigs invasion! Revolutions are born from the most brutal forms of exploitation and violence. Not even the wildest anticommunist propaganda about post-revolution Cuba comes close to the reality of what the revolution replaced.

    • GulbuddinHekmatyar@lemmy.ml
      301·
      4 months ago

      Ye think slavery, worker rights, and decolonization was done merely by protests and by the mere will of liberalism?

    • Muad'Dibber@lemmygrad.ml
      21·
      4 months ago

      This is historically completely false. I challenge you to find a single historical case where a ruling class has given up their power and wealth without violence or the threat of violence.

      Meanwhile I recommend you read the links we’ve given you.

    • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.netEnglish
      17·
      4 months ago

      ♫ They say in Harlan County, there are no neutrals there: you’ll either be a union man or a thug for J. H. Blair — Which side are you on, which side are you on? ♫

    • Kuori [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
      173·
      4 months ago

      yeah you’re never going to improve as a person. just vote blue no matter who and try not to think about all the violence your empire requires to maintain itself.

      • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
        14·
        4 months ago

        Undialectical take, people are constantly changing. Now it may take a lot of quantitative changes for the qualitative affect of not having their head in their ass to come about given how far in there it is, but…