#441
[account deactivated]
#442
Marxsplainer
Post rating: +

swampman posted:

would probably be in cuba, ..., they'd probably be an RN with arooftop garden,... it makes you, uh, think....



please don't share my deepest desires with the rhizzone

#443
Post rating: ~

swampman posted:

Panopticon posted:

if you'd rather he were dead go ahead and shoot him, i hear americans have easy access to guns

I don't wish they were dead. But I can see why a country would kill someone like their grandpa, instead of just saying "and dont come back!" My coworker's life sucks a lot btw. They have nothing and they recently they almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning thanks to their landlord.

Makes me think the real choice wasnt with the community choosing "exile / death / forgiveness" - those outcomes are dictated by the situation. But rather the real choice was with their grandpa who chose to flee justice. And if the grandpa had surrendered and given up their life of crime, early on, and repented sincerely, my coworker would probably be in cuba, speaking spanish which they prefer to english (but many hispanic people in nyc will not speak spanish to cubans, because they're expats), they'd probably be an RN with arooftop garden,... it makes you, uh, think....

..and in the same way. Why should I feel bad for the individuals in the landlord class who committed no "crime" but were still purged. If their communities felt the individual had resisted communism, had not abandoned their class early on, and had lived in strict accordance with unjust laws that favor them? Why should members of the exploiter class be spared for only exploiting fairly, why should the bourgeoisie be forgiven because they were obedient to laws that protected bourgeois class comforts at the expense of the masses?



i'm not sure why you would think there is no choice and it is purely deterministic. cuba is a clear counter-example. castro let half a million cubans gtfo. i don't see why it wasn't technically possible for him to exterminate the emigrants instead. he had a choice on state policy and he chose not to be a total sociopath.

and it wasn't the community which had the say in executing class enemies. it was a troika of chekists and party officials who often did not see any evidence or testimony of crimes. they executed people on the basis of their category.

if you think this is a good thing we have irreconcilable value systems and discussing this is useless

#444
Post rating: ~
i think the difference in values has been pretty clear from the first page, this has still been a good discussion
#445
Post rating: +

shriekingviolet posted:

i think the difference in values has been pretty clear from the first page, this has still been a good discussion



Lets do it again... again... AGAIN!!!

Nice to be in a place where the Soviet Union is viewed as a society and not as an imaginary evil theme park.

#446
chickeon
Post rating: ~
panopticon are you gonna be a stick in the mud when we bring it back next year for the centennial bc if so maybe you just won't be invited
#447
Post rating: ~

chickeon posted:

panopticon are you gonna be a stick in the mud when we bring it back next year for the centennial bc if so maybe you just won't be invited



nah stalin had barely anything to do with that

#448
Post rating: ~
hey guys since this is the de facto soviet history thread, i remember something someone posted here once about early soviet debates about what to do with infrastructure that was developed by the russian empire, i think it focused on railroads? does this sound familiar to anyone?
#449
Post rating: +

Panopticon posted:

postposting posted:
and yet somehow this division of power and rule of law throughout history has done nothing to curb the systemic violence inherent in the economic system which promotes it. slavery and genocide can be perfectly legal and have been perfectly legal historically under the rule of law.


states with slavery (different classes of people having different legal rights) obviously did not have rule of law



you're making huge unsupported claims about that the definition of law itself, not the rule of law. you're assuming a strictly natural law definition, which in fact runs contrary to a lot of aspects of the rule of law (that someone can only be punished for doing something that was illegal according to the written laws at the time of commission, the non-retroactivity that you referenced before) as commonly understood. there is nothing inherent in the concept of the rule of law that implies that the laws themselves cannot be discriminatory based on race or class or any other characteristic.

if you passed a law that said all babies born with blue eyes shall be put to death, and then killed all babies proven to be born with blue eyes in accordance with established legal procedures, that satisfies the rule of law.

you're just saying that evil laws are not laws, which is a completely different argument... and the subject of thousands and thousands of books written in the past 2500 years. a recent example is the prosecution of nazis after the war for "crimes against peace" when there was no such existing law. you can either say that you believe in an unwritten natural law that they broke, or in a non-retroactive positivist rule of law under which they were innocent, but not both, which is what you're trying to do

#450
Post rating: ~

Panopticon posted:

swampman posted:

Panopticon posted:

if you'd rather he were dead go ahead and shoot him, i hear americans have easy access to guns

I don't wish they were dead. But I can see why a country would kill someone like their grandpa, instead of just saying "and dont come back!" My coworker's life sucks a lot btw. They have nothing and they recently they almost died from carbon monoxide poisoning thanks to their landlord.

Makes me think the real choice wasnt with the community choosing "exile / death / forgiveness" - those outcomes are dictated by the situation. But rather the real choice was with their grandpa who chose to flee justice. And if the grandpa had surrendered and given up their life of crime, early on, and repented sincerely, my coworker would probably be in cuba, speaking spanish which they prefer to english (but many hispanic people in nyc will not speak spanish to cubans, because they're expats), they'd probably be an RN with arooftop garden,... it makes you, uh, think....

..and in the same way. Why should I feel bad for the individuals in the landlord class who committed no "crime" but were still purged. If their communities felt the individual had resisted communism, had not abandoned their class early on, and had lived in strict accordance with unjust laws that favor them? Why should members of the exploiter class be spared for only exploiting fairly, why should the bourgeoisie be forgiven because they were obedient to laws that protected bourgeois class comforts at the expense of the masses?

i'm not sure why you would think there is no choice and it is purely deterministic. cuba is a clear counter-example. castro let half a million cubans gtfo. i don't see why it wasn't technically possible for him to exterminate the emigrants instead. he had a choice on state policy and he chose not to be a total sociopath.

and it wasn't the community which had the say in executing class enemies. it was a troika of chekists and party officials who often did not see any evidence or testimony of crimes. they executed people on the basis of their category.

if you think this is a good thing we have irreconcilable value systems and discussing this is useless



but your value system is simply bourgeois values. for example, why is simply being a landlord not a crime? landlords steal the labor of others. capitalists not only steal the labor of others but this is the entirety of their being. that this form of theft is legal while direct theft of someone's property is illegal is simply because that is the function of bourgeois law. if we are to retain law under socialism, than the enforcement of punishment for this theft is probably the defining feature of socialist law.

if you think that the criminalization of economic theft is correct but you think it shouldnt be applied to the past, unfortunately that's not how reality works. the theft of labor which becomes capital transfers through generations, and if we are are to create a just society with law then the correction of this past theft has to take a legal form. if you think that the death penality is the problem rather than the idea of punishment at all, well thats not really a value system but simply a minor criticism of people in the 1930s who lived in a violent world. Mao himself learned from this experience and criticized it and yet remained a committed Marxist-Leninist so this is easily rectifiable.

#451
Post rating: ~

solzhesnitchin posted:

you're making huge unsupported claims about that the definition of law itself, not the rule of law. you're assuming a strictly natural law definition, which in fact runs contrary to a lot of aspects of the rule of law (that someone can only be punished for doing something that was illegal according to the written laws at the time of commission, the non-retroactivity that you referenced before) as commonly understood. there is nothing inherent in the concept of the rule of law that implies that the laws themselves cannot be discriminatory based on race or class or any other characteristic.

if you passed a law that said all babies born with blue eyes shall be put to death, and then killed all babies proven to be born with blue eyes in accordance with established legal procedures, that satisfies the rule of law.



well most definitions of the rule of law i've seen say something about them being general/abstract/applied evenly, rather than specific. for example the definition i posted on page 4 by libertarian drieu godefridi says "perfectly general and abstract". this is to prevent the laws being discriminatory. men's rights advocates in america complaining about the draft not affecting women is an example of a law that isn't general and abstract. killing blue eyed babies would be another.

solzhesnitchin posted:

you're just saying that evil laws are not laws, which is a completely different argument... and the subject of thousands and thousands of books written in the past 2500 years. a recent example is the prosecution of nazis after the war for "crimes against peace" when there was no such existing law. you can either say that you believe in an unwritten natural law that they broke, or in a non-retroactive positivist rule of law under which they were innocent, but not both, which is what you're trying to do



i would say the nuremberg trials were ex post facto laws that went against the spirit of the rule of law. i won't be shedding any tears for goering, though. in the socialist world republic these issues of jurisdictional limbos won't exist, there will be one supreme judiciary to arbitrate disputes between humanity.

#452
Post rating: ~

babyhueypnewton posted:

if you think that the criminalization of economic theft is correct but you think it shouldnt be applied to the past, unfortunately that's not how reality works



okay

#453
Post rating: ~
how many of the stalinists own black leather coats? hot hearts and cool heads, and all that
#454
Post rating: ~

Panopticon posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

if you think that the criminalization of economic theft is correct but you think it shouldnt be applied to the past, unfortunately that's not how reality works

okay



do you agree with reparations? even mainstream liberalism understands that past economic disparity has to be accounted for in the laws of the present

#455
Post rating: +

Panopticon posted:

well most definitions of the rule of law i've seen say something about them being general/abstract/applied evenly, rather than specific. for example the definition i posted on page 4 by libertarian drieu godefridi says "perfectly general and abstract". this is to prevent the laws being discriminatory. men's rights advocates in america complaining about the draft not affecting women is an example of a law that isn't general and abstract. killing blue eyed babies would be another.



lmao

#456
Post rating: +
#457
Post rating: ~

deleuzional posted:

Lets do it again... again... AGAIN!!!

Nice to be in a place where the Soviet Union is viewed as a society and not as an imaginary evil theme park.



We're glad to have you.

#458
Post rating: ~

babyhueypnewton posted:

do you agree with reparations? even mainstream liberalism understands that past economic disparity has to be accounted for in the laws of the present



do you believe that the mode of production will change when we move from socialism to communism? do you believe that there will be differences in how the social product is divided between people?

if so, do you believe there should be executions of communist party members for presiding over a system which divided the social product in a different permutation?

#459
Post rating: ~
Panopticon did you respond to me w/r/t rule of law and the us civil war and i missed it?
#460
Post rating: ~

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

So how about the Civil War when the North used violence and dictatorship against the South which had codified slavery but apparently no rule of law? Was Lincoln a monster for knowing the consequences of Shermans campaign?



this? tbh i don't understand what you are asking. are you comparing the war dead of lincoln to the people killed in stalin's purges?

#461
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Im saying Lincoln suspended democracy and imposed a temporary military dictatorship to smash an enemy class and a whole lot of people died
#462
Post rating: ~

EmanuelaBrolandi posted:

Im saying Lincoln suspended democracy and imposed a temporary military dictatorship to smash an enemy class and a whole lot of people died



that would be a tragedy if it were avoidable, i guess. truly humanity will be better off when we have all legal force monopolised by a single entity that practices democracy and rule of law, so that disputes cannot devolve into violence.

#463
Post rating: ~

Panopticon posted:

that would be a tragedy if it were avoidable, i guess. truly humanity will be better off when we have all legal force monopolised by a single entity that practices democracy and rule of law, so that disputes cannot devolve into violence.

#464
Post rating: ~
lmao
#465
UNUSUALY COOL
Post rating: ~
how can you analyze law without considering its class character? you end up like ron paul voters talking about how shitty the drug war is and QQing that black voters won't line up behind them. well no shit because you could legalize every drug and then all you'd need to change is every other law on the books & the class structure of the united states, then you'd be fine.
#466
Post rating: ~
According to this paper I already posted on pg 2 (hitler von Hitler, "what is the law?", 1939) justice should be as obtuse and impossible to measure against real situations as possible. Please read more in my zine, "Strange Contrarian Opinions I Hold"
#467
Post rating: ~
Can someone c/d that the central committee had to stop comrade stalin just wandering around the streets of moscow chatring to people. I cant find any info, googling "stalin walking around the streets and talking to people until the central committee had to stop him" doesnt get me anything useful suprisingly
#468
[account deactivated]
#469
Post rating: ~

Gibbonstrength posted:

According to this paper I already posted on pg 2 (hitler von Hitler, "what is the law?", 1939) justice should be as obtuse and impossible to measure against real situations as possible. Please read more in my zine, "Strange Contrarian Opinions I Hold"



i think things like specificity and non-retroactiveness is much clearer than "class character" or "material analysis and common sense" (littlegreenpills, rhizzone university press, 2016)

#470
Post rating: ~
like, what does it even mean, class character? even within capitalism the capitalist class expresses its character in different ways, sometimes in mutually exclusive ways. for example (if i remember wallerstein correctly) in the 16th century, yeoman farming in western europe vs coerced cash crop labour on latin american encomiendas vs chattel slavery on american and mediterranean plantations

these were all completely different legal orders but they were all part of the capitalist world system
#471
Post rating: +
Wow , shockingly, it seems the class character of legal institutions are mediated by the conditions of the historical and social particular and are not in fact universal. if only we had a deep, systematic effort conducted for over a century to examine the material basis for such particular variations.
#472
Post rating: ~

Panopticon posted:

like, what does it even mean, class character?



#473
Post rating: ~
imagine seeing a gang of belgian mercenaries in the congo cutting off the hands of random villagers to terrorise them into working on the rubber plantations
"ah yes, this random and chaotic violence is a clear expression of the class nature of bourgeois law"

then you see a 19th century factory where the workers are on the verge of starvation thanks to the mass of unemployed peasants (driven off the land by enclosures) competing down wages, who dont unionise or strike because they will be deported to australia or ridden down in the streets by dragoons
"ah yes, this formalised violence is a clear expression of the class nature of bourgeois law"

then you see a 21st century construction worker who has migrated to france or britain from poland who gets paid less than the value of his work but whose only contact with the state is that taxes are deducted automatically from his pay cheque
"ah yes, this obfuscated violence is a clear expression of the class nature of bourgeois law"

when a phrase can describe so many situations it's pretty bad for real analysis.
#474
Post rating: ~

blinkandwheeze posted:

Wow , shockingly, it seems the class character of legal institutions are mediated by the conditions of the historical and social particular and are not in fact universal. if only we had a deep, systematic effort conducted for over a century to examine the material basis for such particular variations.



absolutely meaningless buzzwords

#475
Post rating: ~

Panopticon posted:

when a phrase can describe so many situations it's pretty bad for real analysis.



You're the one that is arbitrarily applying the phrase to a collection of disparate historical contexts here dude not us

#476
Post rating: ~

blinkandwheeze posted:

Panopticon posted:
when a phrase can describe so many situations it's pretty bad for real analysis.


You're the one that is arbitrarily applying the phrase to a collection of disparate historical contexts dude not us



if you aren't applying that phrase to those situations you must agree with me, that the phrase is a meaningless buzzword

#477
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shriekingviolet posted:

Panopticon posted:

like, what does it even mean, class character?




like the book i then cited from to explain why i thought it was a meaningless phrase?

#478
Post rating: ~
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Modern-World-System-Agriculture-World-Economy/dp/0520267575
#479
Post rating: ~
You're right, I'm sorry. Being well read means nothing if you still struggle with such simple concepts as class. My mistake.
#480
Post rating: +

Panopticon posted:

absolutely meaningless buzzwords



i will try and hold your hand through this

no actor behaves universally or identically trans-historically

the particular behaviour of any actor is determined in part or in whole by their immediate social context

we can discern various principles - legal systems are engendered to institutionalise and defend the dominant mode of production - while recognising that the expression of these principles will vary depending on immediate context

that is, a legal institution will have to do different things to uphold a prevailing mode of production in different contexts because they will be facing different threats that demand different responses

to examine what those different responses can be requires thorough analysis of the conditions in which such threats and responses arise

Panopticon posted:

if you aren't applying that phrase to those situations you must agree with me, that the phrase is a meaningless buzzword



i wouldn't apply that phrase to those situations because legal forms aren't some universally present determinant of social existence, they exist only as direct interventions by particular legal institutions

if the interventions of such institutions are not present then it doesn't make sense to talk about any of these conditions as an expression of bourgeois law

again, you're the one that is generalising the principles of a particular mechanism to contexts outside its purview, not anyone else