#41
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roseweird posted:

jools posted:

roseweird posted:

sabotage is good in a lot of scenarios, i think direct violence to other humans undermines the moral force and rightness of a movement however... any intelligent leader has to be prepared to contend with inevitable violence but i don't think anyone should ever forget that complete nonviolence is ideal

the history of the indian state since independence has been a continuous example of why satyagraha is terrifically limited, particularly under formal democracy. with formal democratic processes, the state has an equal moral force to the moral force of non-violence.

yeah, i see what you mean and i don't really know how to respond to this critique, except maybe with bland progressive optimism. but this is why this troubles me so much: is the stasis of total nonviolence vs. the democratic state worse than the violence of cycles of revolution? if we deny all forms of utopianism, it seems like we are forced to regard either violence or bureaucracy as essential and eternal



it's not stasis. the democratic state in india is actively and continuously dispossessing and revolutionising the conditions of life for vast swathes of its populace. it acts as an immense developmental centrifuge, with millions thrown off land in order to make way for SEZs or open cast mining or deforestation. the stasis is purely political. the urban population in india is continually increasing, with megaslums being built upon megaslums, which in turn are demolished to make way for the 1/5 of the population or so who are seeing benefits from their economic growth. india is also in a continuous (and in many senses carefully calibrated to prevent *too much* unrest) state of semi-famine, with a greater proportion malnourished than in the alleged sine qua non of food poverty, sub-saharan africa. more die due to malnourishment every few years than died in china's great leap forward. this is not stasis. the violence of the naxalites is if anything an attempt to introduce stasis, with revolution as the "emergency brakes on history". the future is continually bursting into the present at an ever increasing rate and it mows down everything in its path. if preventing this takes subjecting society to a dictatorship of those with the least stake in its present state, a dictatorship which will and frankly must use the tools of violence and bureaucracy, then so be it... we can talk about dealing with those once the conditions of every day life are not dependent on a perpetual motion machine running on human misery

#42
Post rating: ~

roseweird posted:

jools posted:

roseweird posted:

sabotage is good in a lot of scenarios, i think direct violence to other humans undermines the moral force and rightness of a movement however... any intelligent leader has to be prepared to contend with inevitable violence but i don't think anyone should ever forget that complete nonviolence is ideal

the history of the indian state since independence has been a continuous example of why satyagraha is terrifically limited, particularly under formal democracy. with formal democratic processes, the state has an equal moral force to the moral force of non-violence.

yeah, i see what you mean and i don't really know how to respond to this critique, except maybe with bland progressive optimism. but this is why this troubles me so much: is the stasis of total nonviolence vs. the democratic state worse than the violence of cycles of revolution? if we deny all forms of utopianism, it seems like we are forced to regard either violence or bureaucracy as essential and eternal



the "stasis of total nonviolence vs. the democratic state" is completely entrenched in violence. it's just that as imperialist powers acting as the central nervous system of capitalism they've exiled most of the violence to the periphery

#43
Mike Nelson here.
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#44
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you should say that's colonel sanders
#45
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and then post it in Fuck Yeah Trotskyism or whatever other weird larpy facebook group
#46
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also i expected better than liberal hand-wringing from you, Rose"I want to eradicate the male sex"Weird
#47
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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roseweird posted:

it isn't that violence never works, but that violence works only to limited ends, and its gains are always threatened by the rebounding of violence, so that empires or unions made by violence always fall apart in violence. there is a genuine moral superiority to nonviolence, and this is important in the long term.



yes, this is exactly why you have two groups, one violent one non-violent, with the non-violent group providing the public face and generating support among the populace, and the violent group actually Getting Shit Done (preferably disguised as below the radar, nonpolitical criminal activity), exactly like Gandhi did. and like America, a civilian-led military dictatorship

#48
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
Post rating: +

roseweird posted:

if everyone was a coward though there wouldn't be so much violence



or, there would be TONS of violence, reactionary violence based in fear, specifically fear of change. what were talking about is revolutionary violence, the goal of which is change, which therefore requires courage

#49
Poronto
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how will the state come down on terrorists when they start using EMP devices on stockmarkets and whatnot
#50
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seems relevant: http://www.rhizzone.net/forum/topic/182/?page=162#post-157961

i'd had to reread his essay, but iirc Paulo Freire pointed to education/literacy as a means of stopping the cycle of violence.

Girardian thought says all society/culture is founded on violence. In this sense, a nonviolent society is a contradiction (although he ultimately advocates a pacifist response to the violence of society).

Is the distinction between acceptable degrees of violence (use of force v. murder) a luxury not granted until after the revolution starts revolving, or should it be an issue addressed at the start?
#51
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i don't think you can engage with the question of what kind of violence etc as an issue of morality, to be honest
#52
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
Post rating: +

roseweird posted:

sabotage is good in a lot of scenarios, i think direct violence to other humans undermines the moral force and rightness of a movement however... any intelligent leader has to be prepared to contend with inevitable violence but i don't think anyone should ever forget that complete nonviolence is ideal



except that in the event of actual complete nonviolence, undercover police and the complicit media will be more than willing to provide that violence on your behalf. so once they start doing that, you might as well go ahead and get your hands wet m8

roseweird posted:

well yeah but i'm saying it on this internet forum, i probably wouldn't say that to a haitian slave. but part of the tragedy of violence is the effect carrying out violence will have on the slave, compounding the trauma of the bondage from which violence brings freedom. even the most justified and understandable violence is tragic and traumatic. it isn't hard to imagine justified violence, but it is hard to imagine a truly good society emerging from violence



have you ever seen a bullied kid finally snap and beat the shit out of his oppressor? its the most beautiful thing in the world. it doesnt "compound" his trauma, it compounds his joy and reasserts his agency. lil boy feel like big man. righteous violence is liberating for the soul, repressing your natural revolutionary urges leads to yid psychiatry and political f a i l a i d s

#53
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#54
Poronto
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i dunno superabound i stabbed a kid in the head for making fun of me and i think it was a bad decision in retrospect
#55
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#56
Mike Nelson here.
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on Mao teaching history at a school in his youth: "Two years later, when he was teaching in another establishment, people complained about him being naked from the waist up. When asked to dress more decently, Mao retorted: 'There wouldn't be anything scandalous if I was stark naked. Consider yourself lucky I'm not completely naked.'"
#57
tardy on these heaters
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Jools is right, everyone else is goofy
#58
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jools once ran out of underwear so he pulled a track sock over his junk in an effort to soak up his copious ballsweat and wore it around. try and tell me he isn't goofy too.
#59
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it was surprisingly comfortable
#60
tardy on these heaters
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He's goofy!! He's a goofy cocksucker!!!
#61
Not Your S.H.I.E.L.D.
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littlegreenpills posted:

i dunno superabound i stabbed a kid in the head for making fun of me and i think it was a bad decision in retrospect



only because your bougie, probably liberal parents told you that what you did was wrong, dooming you to a life of passivity, cuckoldry, and posting. well guess what, im here to tell you it wasnt. youre a good kid

#62
Nippon
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reminder that the general public hates the shit out of protestors
#63
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#64
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i dont want to lead shit. lol owned everyone
#65
Mike Nelson here.
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jools posted:

i dont want to lead shit. lol owned everyone

some have greatness thrust upon them.

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#68
Nippon
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i went to occupy boston several times and it was pretty sad in retrospect. there were like 30-60 people there out of a metro area - accessible by cheap public transport - of about 4 million, in the most college-heavy city in america if not the world. the population doubled during raids and went up dramatically during marches but if just 5% of the population of colleges that were a 30 minute train ride or less from the park had shown up it would have been about 10,000 people. college used to be a nexus of protests because it was the larval bourgeoisie rebelling against the system, now it's the middle-class trying to keep its head down and graduate
#69
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hey roseweird: http://sdonline.org/44/were-revolutions-in-china-necessary/
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#71
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yeah honestly college students have a pretty chequered history as far as Social Movements go... from 1832 to 1968...
#72
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#73
tardy on these heaters
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Youwere a college student once Too you know. Have a heart!
#74
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#75
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#76
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i think darfur i am
#77
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#78
Nippon
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idk what the politics of the average boston undergrad are. probably obamailureship
#79
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#80
UNUSUALY COOL
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In principle we have never rejected, and cannot reject, terror. Terror is one of the forms of military action that may be perfectly suitable and even essential at a definite juncture in the battle, given a definite state of the troops and the existence of definite conditions. But the important point is that terror, at the present time, is by no means suggested as an operation for the army in the field, an operation closely connected with and integrated into the entire system of struggle, but as an independent form of occasional attack unrelated to any army. Without a central body and with the weakness of local revolutionary organisations, this, in fact, is all that terror can be.