Is there a point at which violence is the only way to enact change and defend one’s self? How does one recognize that point?

[Martin_Hyde]

@SenorBeef

You can look at most of the history of civilization as a struggle between the powerful trying to exploit the masses as much as they can

Yeah, if you are a die-hard Marxist–which most people are not. Marxism’s attempt to reduce everything to class struggle is fanciful and unsupported by historical reality.

@SenorBeef

So if you were inclined to read FDR’s intentions cynically, you might read the New Deal as a pressure relief valve.

I mean that isn’t anything new or cynical, it was actually understood even during FDR’s lifetime that the New Deal was an attempt to save America’s capitalist system by fixing structural weaknesses in it that might lead to it becoming a socialist system. Some of those fixes essentially implemented socialist ideas into policy. That isn’t new, for what it’s worth, in the latter part of his time as Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who represented the conservative Junker aristocracy saw the challenges that Germany was facing from rising socialist movements. He undercut them with social welfare policies that largely served as exactly a pressure release valve. They didn’t return with force until the disaster of WWI, the collapse of the German economy and the weakness of Weimar. Bismarck was a student of history and politics, and the Revolutions of 1848 happened during his formative years, he knew the makings of popular unrest when he saw them and found a way to hobble it.

@SenorBeef

Sure, the rich had to give up some of their wealth - and this was not a small matter, they almost executed a coup against him - but in doing so, they’d avoid the worst of the backlash and maintain the traditional power structure in the US.

While that is a fascinating footnote to history (much like a similar “businessman’s coup” contemplated in 1968 Britain), much like that one the actual reality of it was never that serious. They both amounted to little more than a couple rich guys with bad intentions, and the evidence is fairly weak that it was close to a real action.

@SenorBeef

As I mentioned, inequality now is worse than it was during the Roarin’ 20s. Millenials and Gen Z will be the first American generations that does worse than their parents financially. And why? There was no great war, no great catastrophe. The world is more peaceful and prosperous than it has ever been. There’s more wealth to share than there has ever been, even as the average person has less and less of it. Things that were considered basic staples of American life are falling further out of reach - education, access to medicine, home ownership, and more recently, even being able to pay your own rent.

There’s a grab bag of claims here, some rooted in truth but many not. The importance of each claim is also varying, and IMO you overstate most of them.

• Yes, it does look like on net, Millennials as a group will do worse or at least not much better than their parents. However, much of that is tied to homeownership. Baby boomers bought into the housing market largely during a period of housing construction boom, and Millennials have come of age in an era with two major recessions and a major lull in housing construction, this has created stratospheric housing costs which have held back Millennial family formation and household wealth. But in many areas Millennials are actually doing better than their parents, for example 68% of Millennials do earn more than their parents (cite).

• The idea that education is falling out of reach is not supported by the evidence. Millennials have higher academic attainment (cite) than prior generations, which also includes a huge increase in women’s academic attainment. The Millennial generation was the first generation where more women than men had college degrees.

• The claim on access to medicine is also not supported by evidence. The Census started collecting data on Health Insurance Coverage in 1987, when about 87% of the population was covered by an employer or government health plan (cite). That obviously means around a 13% uninsured rate–this rate would actually increase in the 1990s as unions lost sway and large industrial employers which generally hired 18-21 year old men right into insurance plans cut back employment, leaving a growing underclass of uninsured. However, the rate started to decline after the implementation of the PPACA and was at its lowest measured rate ever by 2020.

While the housing issue is a real problem, it is basically a policy failure that has had outsize influence on the overall narrative. There are a number of reasonable solutions (none of which are being well pursued), but the idea that it’s the fault of the rich and powerful isn’t supported by evidence. Most of the gap between the wealthiest and the rest is based on equity markets and the practice of primarily rewarding the upper class for their work with equity shares instead of salary, this is not the cause of suppressed Millennial household wealth. Executives earning far more money because their wealth increases with the stock market has not made middle class people poorer.

@SenorBeef

It’s a cycle. The greed of the powerful always resurfaces. They try to take more and more until people have had enough, and push back. The only thing that keeps those in power in most countries giving any sort of concessions to those below them - to reel in their greed and help improve things for the average person - is the fear that what happened to Louis XIV could happen to them.

This is a Marxist claim on class struggle unsupported by present reality. As is typical with Marx, his views were somewhat well formed given his window into the world, but he didn’t really foresee the way the world would develop. In the real world for example, polled billionaires broke for Biden in 2020 (cite), and while there is no high quality polling on it, plenty of the wealthiest Americans are advocates of increased taxes.

It seems like the biggest reservoir of antipathy to taxes and social spending are in the upwardly mobile $100-500k AGI range, which kind of matches a lot of sociocultural investigations that have been done on that group (and could be a thread in its own right.) Another significant reservoir of antipathy to support for the poor is not based on class issues but is based on cultural grievance (cite), within the white working class there is significant antipathy to other low income people on assistance. There’s elements of racial grievance absolutely baked into that, but as that article aptly demonstrates (and as anyone raised in that environment like I was can attest), the white working poor largely loathe the white non-working poor. That is a fertile ground for grievance messaging that isn’t really based on Marxist class struggle.

Another simple reality that is often glossed over with talk like this is the true wealthy don’t worry nearly as much about taxes as the petty rich. The true rich people have been able to accumulate wealth and mitigate tax burdens since FDR’s time without serious issue, and are so rich that they mostly view success and failure in different ways than the petty rich.

@SenorBeef

The “economic elite” have completely captured both parties in the US. Study and journalistic write up. Even before the current conservative coup that will very likely be successful, democracy in the US was already a bit of a farce. Elections are real (this is likely coming to an end), but almost irrelevant to policy in as far as it concerns the balance of power between the rich and the regular people.

The country was founded by the wealthy class and has always been dominated by them. This isn’t news, and in every measure out there of civic participation and power, the lower classes have steadily increased their power and influence over time, the presentation that the elites “captured” both parties as a new development is disingenuous. The two parties were directly created by wealthy cabals and have always been led by them, but both parties are absolutely more influenced by the underclass now than ever before–arguably to our detriment. The famous work The Power Elite was written in the 1950s, there is nothing new here and if anything, the problem is less grave today than it was then.

In most ways elections are still freer and fairer today than they were in the past, despite recent hyperbole.

@SenorBeef

It has been quite a long time since the American people have engaged in significant civil disobedience (the George Floyd protests might be the only significant event since the civil rights conflict of the 60s) and the rich and powerful are overconfident that they can keep pushing us - keep getting even greedier - until they have everything. And so far they’re right, they’ve faced no significant resistance. They think they can achieve that end through controlling our media to control us. They might be right. We’re in uncharted territory. It doesn’t usually go this far before there’s that backlash.

America is a socially conservative country with stability as a forefront value, it has never been a very warm recipient of civil disobedience. A grand total of one time in our history can you clearly link important political and social reforms to mass civil disobedience–and that was the 1960s Civil Rights movement, and even then I think the big demonstrations were probably exaggerated in importance as far as getting policies changed. I think they were important for recruiting people to a cause, but the simple reality is elite Democratic powerbrokers like LBJ were the most important element of the Civil Rights movement, and his alliance he formed with MLK and the SCLC. More was done in private meetings between King and Johnson than was ever done on famous bridges or streets.

@SenorBeef

The creation of Fox News and that whole echo chamber - conservative talk radio, think tanks, chain e-mails, twitter bots, the whole deal - was basically designed to create unthinking obedience, even when acting against their own interest, of a significant, very politically active minority in the US. And they’ve done an incredible job of it.

Unlike the era of Machine Politics, which was highlighted by lots of independent thought and freethinking? A big counterpoint is there are far more sources of news and media today than ever before–Fox News gets less viewers than Joe Rogan gets listeners. Fox News is part of old media, and exaggerated in importance. It is absolutely true that there has been big media consolidation, but its effects are far less serious than you present. For one, in the past while media ownership was more diffuse, media was primarily carved up into small geographic fiefdoms. There were only a couple “national” papers, and there were only three national TV networks running news, and by and large all of those entities were controlled by a class of wealthy Ivy League types. Additionally, while media ownership was diffuse, the local paper and TV owners were generally the local wealthy scions, they weren’t run by Ma & Pa Kettle. To some degree the media consolidation is of limited importance because at the same time that was happening, people were becoming less locked in to those fiefdoms. No one has to watch the local 6 o clock news at all anymore–and many don’t. The reality is we have far more diversity of news access than ever before. The real negative of that is the general quality of information has decreased because there is no filtering elite in place any longer, but you can’t really say that the information infrastructure is more controlled by the elites in 2022 than in 1965. Guys like Joe Rogan or Steve Crowder would have had audiences of a few dozen at most in the 1960s. Things like the Drudge Report, Daily Kos, Vox Media, Breitbart etc would have been unthinkable. That’s before we even talk about YouTube where anyone with a camera can be their own TV broadcaster.

@SenorBeef

These are the people who will fight to the death to cut their own food stamps and medicare, who were basically made into a ready to hijack cult when Trump came along. The people who are willing to fight the hardest against taxation or any other social policy that benefits the average person at the expense of the rich are people who have essentially been brainwashed into being passionately against their own interests.

Except again, a lot of these people are not actually on those programs and dislike them for cultural reasons. You’re infantilizing them by saying they have been brainwashed. The reality is the grievance of the white working class is far more of a bottoms up cultural phenomenon than a top down one, which is at odds with your overall presentation of basic Marxist theory.

@SenorBeef

The rich and powerful devised this plan as a way to maintaining a complete control in a nominal democracy and enact policies that hurt almost every American to the benefit of a very tiny few and it has created a level of cult-like obedience to a degree that I think exceeded their wildest dreams.

There is no broad cooperation between “the rich and powerful” as a class. Yes, some rich and powerful people have deliberately promoted policies that insulate their wealth and stoke cultural grievances. However, they do not act as a unified class in any discernible way. The wealthy are no more united along class lines than the poor in America.

@SenorBeef

Our history has also been whitewashed. Things we take for granted today, like unions, worker protections, and civil rights, were paid for in blood. They were brought about by violence and the threat of violence. But the vast majority of Americans don’t know those stories.

Not really. Unions were basically captured by organized crime and were often as not a tool for hurting the working class (cite, cite), worker protections and civil rights were largely created by the middle class being piqued by public journalism raising awareness of these problems. The violence associated with these movements often held back policy wins for years.

@SenorBeef

They downplay the violence and threat of violence that made them worry about the stability of society and their place on top of it. They’ve convinced us that “violence is never the answer” and washed that that out of even potentially being part of the discussion, because they know that’s one of the few tools that the rest of us have to push back when they’ve exploited us too much. That sort of framing is affecting almost all of you, who are probably uncomfortable reading me talk about violence as one of the only ways to fight back against those who would exploit us because the idea of violence being a legitimate tool in the face of injustice has been completely invalidated in your mind as a thought that a reasonable and decent person can have. That’s exactly the sort of control I’m talking about.

I don’t know of any lawful democracy that regularly teaches its children that using violence is a way to solve political problems.

@SenorBeef

Non-participation can work too - the threat of general strikes and non-compliance can threaten their income, and so they’d listen to that, too, but they’ve also effectively controlled that. Over 90% of media in the US is owned by the same 6 giant conglomerates. If there were burgeoning efforts to have general strikes to increase the living condition for the average person, do you think these corporate owned news sources would spread the news to make people aware of those? Really?

General strikes, in countries where they occur, are generally not facilitated by print / news media. Striking in the United States was not generally assisted by media either.

@SenorBeef

You could say that the internet can get around the stranglehold that the powerful have over traditional media, but that’s becoming increasingly less true, too. A lot of you were around 15 or 20 years ago, when the internet was a wild west full of a million different places and ideas. It’s increasingly becoming 5 or 6 big websites that control everyone’s experience. They wield an incredible amount of power through their editorial decisions, their decisions to allow disinformation, their choice to steer people towards right wing radicalization, etc. We’ve basically taken the promise out of the internet and voluntarily made it another place where a few entities can control the acceptable range of discussion as a society, just like traditional media has become.

You still have the option to use social media and news aggregators or get your own stuff. That’s an option that didn’t exist in the 1960s when for example I lived in a community served by one local paper and the normal three broadcast TV stations. Whatever level of control we may have now it is far less than then.

@SenorBeef

The rich and powerful allow us to fight over issues that they don’t give a shit about, like guns and abortion and religion and racism while they hope they don’t notice that no one has been allowed to make a policy that benefits the economic interests of the average person over the rich in many decades, while they rape our planet and post an existential threat to human civilization so they can get their wealth high score up a little higher before they die. They love it when we squabble about these things as it gives us the illusion that we’re in control while they exploit us.

Again, a presentation of the rich and powerful as a collective class that doesn’t match reality. There’s a long list of hardcore environmentalist rich people, and many of the biggest environmental orgs are backed by wealthy benefactors. On the other side, there’s tons of passionate gun rights advocates among the super wealthy. The idea that the rich don’t care about gun rights or are broadly anti-environemnt just isn’t supported by reality. This is where Marxist theory breaks down as it always does, it makes assumptions about collective class ideals that don’t match with the reality of historical development since the mid-19th century.

@SenorBeef

We are already pretty far past the point where that traditional pushback of the masses against the elites would’ve happened. Our policies are so greedy that people are having a hard time surviving in a peaceful, prosperous world. It seems pretty clear that improving the lives of the vast majority of us is not in the cards, that maximum greed is going to be pressed until things fall apart. As demonstrated in the aforementioned studies and through observation and common sense, voting isn’t going to get us there, and widescale non-compliance is likely not in the cards, either.

We aren’t in any state of real crisis, for example like we were in 1860 or 1929, the United States have never really been a country where the masses “revolt”, our two biggest revolts were led by wealthy elites (the American Revolution and the Civil War.)

@SenorBeef

Given that, and given the never-ending cycle of greed and exploitation while our lives get worse in the richest, most peaceful period in world history, what options are left to make our lives better, and to get our share of that prosperity?

In most ways the country is better off now than it was in the 1970s. Political polarization is much worse, there are some genuine concerns about the fairness of elections, and the overturning of Roe without any serious attempt to settle the issue with appropriate legislation are dark blots, but I still largely think things will continue on as they have in mostly positive ways.

I’m not really positive about America’s future really, but primarily for reasons related to polarization between differing groups of people. I am not concerned the country is secretly being controlled by an evil cabal of rich people. Yes, the wealthy and the elite have disproportionate power, as they always have, but I frankly am more comfortable with that than I am with what I identify as the real source of trouble in America, which is right wing populism.

[k9bfriender]

@Martin_Hyde

Marxism’s attempt to reduce everything to class struggle is fanciful and unsupported by historical reality.

I see Marxism as having three distinct aspects.

Pointing out the flaws in capitalism, proposing naive solutions to those problems, and horrific attempts at implementing these solutions.

I think that the first is still entirely valid, and the flaws and criticisms are largely unchanged. Whenever the wealthy bathe in the lap of luxury while the impoverished struggle to eke out survival, that’s class struggle.

That the solutions proposed by Marx were mostly unworkable in his day, and laughably disastrous in modern day, doesn’t mean that we don’t need to find solutions. When the wants of some outweigh the needs of many, you have an untenable situation, that’s going to break. Better to find ways of addressing it, rather than leaving it to fester, as that not only hurts individual people in the short run, it also causes damage to larger institutions in the long.

[Martin_Hyde]

I never dismissed all of Marxist theory, but I did dismiss and I think frankly historical development since the 19th century has debunked Marx’s view that societal interactions are defined entirely by class struggle. I think Marx would have a hard time understanding the modern economy in class struggle terms because a lot of it just doesn’t match his baseline understanding.

Yeah, a traditional manufacturing firm where say, a wealthy family owns it, petty bourgeoise managers run it, and blue-collar laborers work the line still match a lot of Marx’s understanding. However, the percentage of the workforce employed in firms like that is now very low.

[Leaper]

Fair enough. I was probably thinking of the kind that had the potential or purpose of actually injuring people who tried to use the equipment. Obviously that’s not all the word encompasses.

[Jackmannii]

@k9bfriender

@Jackmannii

the Right is generally better at (violence), and they have more guns.

Meh, they are certainly bigger bullies, and they are more want to threaten violence, but using it effectively to bring about change, I wouldn’t agree that they are better at it at all, and no matter how many guns some right wing nutter has, he still only has two hands.

A reminder about how well such confrontations have worked out in the past.

[k9bfriender]

Your “example” is about as far from being relevant to anything being spoken of that I suppose I will give you a “reminder” of an example that is at least more relevant.

American Civil War

[Jackmannii]

You’re quite right, the Civil War is relevant, though not in the way you seem to think.

While the far Left is in no way morally analogous to the old South, the Civil War provides an excellent example of what happens when people who are smugly convinced of their self-righteousness launch a violent conflict they have precious little chance of winning.*

See also: Japan, 1941.

*for the time being, talk of modern secession seems to have died down somewhat, but if the upcoming election doesn’t go a certain way, expect nitwits to stir it up again.

[Martin_Hyde]

The idea that any future “civil war” is going to be decided by which side has more gun nuts is not realistic or in line with reality as seen in any other civil war. It’s going to depend on which side controls most of the military and other relics of the current State’s physical power. Most likely multiple segments would wind up with nukes which could mean things quiet down fairly fast (or not…and then they get really quiet.)

And FWIW the military has not broken strongly Republican in polling, going against what many would think. Polling of the military vote in 2016 found 40.5% supported Trump, 20.6% Hillary, and 34.3% third party (that probably isn’t a typo or wrong data–the military has always had more third-party voters than many other voting groups; in 2020 37.4% supported Trump, 41.3% Biden and 12.8% Third Party.

The military is not a lock for the far right.

[Horatius]

@Martin_Hyde

in 2020 37.4% supported Trump, 41.3% Biden and 12.8% Third Party.

The military is not a lock for the far right.

I kind of feel like these numbers make things even worse. In contrast to my earlier comment about fighting a 10% rebel faction, this suggests the battle will be much closer to an even fight, which will be far more destructive.

[LSLGuy]

In any “civil war”, the side that chooses to declare the sitting government to be illegitimate and that regime change the solution as to overcome ALL the power of said sitting government.

It becomes a LOT easier if the police and military leaderships & middle ranks are at least nominally already restive about how outre the sitting government has become. But even then organizational inertia, not to mention simple personal self-interest in an ongoing paycheck, are a powerful check on spontaneous rebellion welling up in the ranks.

But rest assured that whether it’s RW wackos rising up against Harris in 2026 or LW wackos rising up against DeSantis in 2026, the sitting government’s sources of coercive power will 95% answer the call. To overwhelming effect.

The dangerous thing about the Jan 6 uprising was just how much revolutionary change they could have delivered in just a few hours. Pence, most of Congress, and a hunk of the Cabinet could have been dead before the police / military could have organized a response and that’s even assuming there wasn’t any official obstruction / foot-dragging from the President / White House.

More conventional stuff like random shootings of the Other or bombings of government facilities around the hot head states would have not nearly the leverage per unit time and would simply be steamrollered into submission.

[k9bfriender]

@Jackmannii

While the far Left is in no way morally analogous to the old South, the Civil War provides an excellent example of what happens when people who are smugly convinced of their self-righteousness launch a violent conflict they have precious little chance of winning.

Are you actually aware of what happened on Jan. 6th? I don’t think that you are one of those who think that was antifa or a false flag, but your comments here certainly seem to indicate that you think that it is the left that is the one that is “smugly convinced of their self-righteousness” and ready to “launch a violent conflict they have precious little chance of winning.”

Anyway, I’m not entirely sure if you mean this as a warning that the right are violent bullies, and so we are best to keep our heads down and mekely accept subversion of our democracy, or as a threat of same, but either way, it’s rather ineffectual. As LSL says, it’s not going to be the people of the other party that one would be fighting, but the full might of the US government. How many guns your right wing nutter has, and how much they are looking forward to using them is utterly irrelevant.

[FlikTheBlue]

One of the problems with violent revolution is that the resulting government is usually just as bad or worse than the one they are replacing. Let’s consider the countries that currently have good governments (and for now I think the US still qualifies). How many of those started after a violent revolution against an oppressive regime?

Off the top of my head, here’s a partial list of countries with good governments that didn’t start out with a violent revolution. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea, UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel, and so on. Almost none of the first world countries current governments started out as violent revolutions. The only two exceptions I can think of are the US and maybe Taiwan depending on how exactly you define a revolution. With the US we just got extremely lucky that the leader of the revolution was George Washington and not a typical person who leads such things. It’s much more likely that the leader will be someone like Fidel Castro, Ayatollah Khomeini, Adolf Hitler, Lenin, Kim Il Sung, Mao Zedong, Robespierre, etc.

[Lumpy]

@madmonk28

@Horatius

Sure, we all know what they wanted to do last time, and are hoping to do next time. But the point remains: the system still worked.

You just know someone said this in Germany when the Beer Hall Putsch failed.

To be fair, this took place in the context of riots and assassinations by communist and right-wing anti-communist elements. The system wasn’t working, which is probably why Hitler was freed after a brief token time in jail rather than face the full penalty for treason and attempted rebellion.

I’m reminded of a quote by Claire Wolfe: “It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards”. However she said that in the early 1970s and we’ve made it this far, so there’s hope.

As far as the Right goes, I don’t really see ordinary people of conservative bent clamoring to join the Brownshirts, form lynch mobs or bomb abortion clinics. Most of the movement against progressive and liberal values today is coming from organized political action by elected officials. What shook out from Jan. 6 was that Trump and other certain players were testing to see IF they had the support to combine political action with rioting and mob justice, and what they got were a tiny percentage of cranks who weren’t going to actually fight a rebellion (seriously; QAnon Shaman as a S.A. member?).

[FrenchDunadan]

are you sure of that?

@FlikTheBlue

Off the top of my head, here’s a partial list of countries with good governments that didn’t start out with a violent revolution. Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Japan, South Korea, UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, Israel

Australia, New zealand, Canada: OK, moved from colony to dominions to autonomous to independant on a 2 centuries time frame and peacefully.
Japan: military occupation for 10 years after a military imperialist dictatorship that invaded and occupied most of its neighbors and needed a world coalition and two atoms bombing to overthrow…
South Korea: after the aforementioned invading neighbor was defeated, civil war and four ! tides of destruction followed by a military dictatorship that slowly evolved toward democracy…
UK: two revolutions, one executed king, several civil wars…
Finland: a civil war against the Reds, followed by two wars against an invading neighbor, followed by 40 years of forced neutralization…
Sweden: they are peaceful since 1816, before that…not really…
Norway: liberated from neighbor Sweden by their own force…
France: three revolutions, oscillating between republic, dictatorship, empire, monarchy, constitutional monarchy, republic again, empire again, one more republic after civil war, dictatorship, and two republics again…
Germany: WW2 anyone?
Italy: defeated and occupied in WW2 too…
Spain: civil war, 40 years of dictatorship…and nearly failed the transition after…
Belgium: created as a buffer between powers, crushed two times by Germany on its way to France, crippled by bitter fights between communities…
Netherlands: 80 years war of liberation against Spain, followed by 2 centuries of fights with neighbors…
Israël: Seriously?..

You’re right in saying that the next government is usually as bad as the former, but not for the same people. That’s change.

[madmonk28]

The system didn’t work this time, either. At least Hitler got a token sentence, that’s more than Trump got.

[Paul_was_in_Saudi]

As a rule, one ought not to use force first.

[madmonk28]

Who here has advocated that?

[Paul_was_in_Saudi]

I did not say someone here advocated anything at all. Please forgive me if I was unclear.

[madmonk28]

I forgive you, this time. Also, since the Republicans have been waging violent war on America for decades, we’re well past the point of having to worry about throwing the first punch.

[Jasmine]

First of all, I see a big difference between the concepts of “defending oneself” and “enacting change”. “Enacting change” can be something as simple as ramming the car in front of you in a fit of road rage because it is traveling slower than you and won’t move over. It is based on personal perspective and, as we know, everyone has an opinion. Once we resort to violence based on that, it will be never ending. “Defending oneself” is, or at least should be, a much more defined situation. If one threatens my life or tries to enter my home with malevolent intent, I wouldn’t hesitate to defend myself by whatever means necessary up to and including whatever violence is necessary to do so. Sure, I’d feel really crappy afterwards and cry about it, but I would do the same thing again if necessary.