Journal of Other Forum Analysis

[Eric Cartman]

Capitalism absolutely is the core reason, yes.

For one, the idea that capitalism encapsulates some innate, universal human desire just doesn't have much actual physical evidence backing it up, as much as is true for any other economic system we've had before. Even feudalism wasn't practiced the same exact way in the same exact times across countries like Egypt, Japan, and England back when these systems were in place. Why? Because the physical environment of these countries was different, which in turn meant that the resulting conditions people had to deal with were different, which inevitably leads to different cultural evolutions. Human development is inevitable, but the outcome of the development is not; subsequently, the establishment of capitalism is loaded with such a shitload of chance that you get wildly different historical outcomes if certain events go a different way.

Seriously, tweak a few numbers and events here and there and you might get a timeline where Europeans aren't literally kidnapping so many Africans that the population didn't actually grow for centuries. However, we live in the timeline where Europe was able to establish significant military dominance, particularly at sea, in the run up to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, but what is important to note here is not only did capitalism lead directly to a slave trade on an unprecedented scale, but, like with feudalism, cultural conditions follow the economic conditions.

So it is with capitalism that you start seeing the establishment of not just white supremacy- all of the social, religious, and pseudo-scientific justifications for the economic reality of Africans being capital in and of themselves- but first the establishment of "whiteness" as a political class all on its own in the first place, mainly to help confused and sympathetic European indentured servants figure out which side they were supposed to be on. Literally, without capitalism, you don't even reach the concept of some unified "white people" in the first place.

Now, I don't think necessarily socialism would be immune from the racial ills we see today from a legacy of colonialism, because I don't think socialism on its own inherently fixes the fact that Africans are currently dealing with the outcome of a massive wealth, labor, and body transfer across centuries that amounts to trillions of dollars stolen, millions of lives and an immeasurable amount of culture lost forever, and the psychological trappings of the cultural conditioning that needed to be established for that to work for as long as it did. I feel for that to happen, you need actual violent revolution, and for Africans to take back what is rightfully theirs. You would also need conscious efforts at establishing African soft power and dismantling whatever white supremacist infrastructure existed in order to counteract centuries' old notions of our supposed inferiority.

However, ultimately the aim of socialism is inherently to disperse power over the material conditions of our economic systems- the ownership of land, factories, companies, etc.- across a generalized mass of workers. So, at the very least, it simply moves in the direction of fixing the condition of all Africans by stripping power away from the class of capitalists who ultimately owe all of their power specifically to African oppression. Socialism is more communal, cooperative, and less hierarchical in nature than capitalism is, meaning it is going to trend towards more egalitarian outcomes by default. That doesn't mean socialists can't be racist, of course, and it certainly doesn't mean capitalist racists wouldn't be able to try to infiltrate socialist movements specifically to sabotage them. They did it all throughout the civil rights movement of the 50s and they're still doing it today.

But ultimately if you're asking me whether or not I think capitalism or socialism would be better for Africans, it is socialism, no question. It's not just that capitalism inherently incentivizes greed, although it does do that. It's that the historical reality is that America and Western Europe are the wealthy power players they are specifically because they fucked over Africans and Indigenous groups for centuries. "Reforming" capitalism is not going to solve that problem, no more than an abusive partner is salvageable after the 30th time they've slammed your head into the wall.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-atlantic-too-much-purity-is-bad-for-the-left.829731/page-7?post=120865104#post-120865104

Democratic socialism is definitely not a centrist position in American politics, but it's still ultimately just capitalism. If you're talking to anti-capitalists, then countering with dismissals of your committal to leftism with the fact that you're a Dem Soc is not gonna convince that sector of leftists.

That is true under a leftist framework that poses that capitalism is the base problem with many a groups' oppression. Both parties are capitalist, therefore both are inevitably going to be responsible for the same oppression even if it's to different degrees.

Part of the fight is not just in understanding where you personally stand on a general praxis level, but in being open to really hammering down and critiquing your biases and blind spots. You might have liberal biases that you need to hammer out if you're interested in not being characterized as such. This shit is hard. And it only gets harder the more you learn.

What's great is you know she's never even read this shit. Probably hasn't even looked at the Wikipedia page about Lenin ever:

If we argue in a Marxist way, we must say: the exploiters inevitably transform the state (and we are speaking of democracy, i.e., one of the forms of the state) into an instrument of the rule of their class, the exploiters, over the exploited. Hence, as long as there are exploiters who rule the majority, the exploited, the democratic state must inevitably be a democracy for the exploiters. A state of the exploited must fundamentally differ from such a state; it must be a democracy for the exploited, “and a means of suppressing the exploiters; and the suppression of a class means inequality for that class, its exclusion from “democracy”.

...

As you see, the relation between the exploited and the exploiters has vanished in Kautsky’s argument. All that remains is majority in general, minority in general, democracy in general, the “pure democracy” with which we are already familiar.

And all this, mark you, is said apropos of the Paris Commune! To make things clearer I shall quote Marx and Engels to show what they said on the subject of dictatorship apropos of the Paris Commune:

Marx: “. . . When the workers replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by their revolutionary dictatorship . . . to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie . . . the workers invest the state with a revolutionary and transitional form . . .”[14]

Engels: “. . . And the victorious party” (in a revolution) “must maintain its rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries. Would the Paris Commune have lasted more than a day if it had not used the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie? Cannot we, on the contrary, blame it for having made too little use of that authority? . . .”[15]

Engels: “As, therefore, the state is only a transitional institution which is used in the struggle, in the revolution, to hold down one’s adversaries by force, it is sheer nonsense to talk of a ‘free people’s state’; so long as the proletariat still needs the state, it does not need it in the interests of freedom but in order to hold down its adversaries, and as soon as it becomes possible to speak of freedom the state as such ceases to exist. . . .”[16]

Kautsky is as far removed from Marx and Engels as heaven is from earth, as a liberal from a proletarian revolutionary. The pure democracy and simple “democracy” that Kautsky talks about is merely a paraphrase of the “free people’s state”, i.e., sheer nonsense. Kautsky, with the learned air of a most learned armchair fool, or with the innocent air of a ten-year-old schoolgirl, asks: Why do we need a dictatorship when we have a majority? And Marx and Engels explain:

—to break down the resistance of the bourgeoisie;

—to inspire the reactionaries with fear;

—to maintain the authority of the armed people against the bourgeoisie;

—that the proletariat may forcibly hold down its adversaries.

Kautsky does not understand these explanations. Infatuated with the “purity” of democracy, blind to its bourgeois character, he “consistently” urges that the majority, since it is the majority, need not “break down the resistance” of the minority, nor “forcibly hold it down”—it is sufficient to suppress cases of infringement of democracy.

...

The exploiter and the exploited cannot be equal.

This truth, however unpleasant it may be to Kautsky, nevertheless forms the essence of socialism.

Another truth: there can be no real, actual equality until all possibility of the exploitation of one class by another has been totally destroyed.

The exploiters can be defeated at one stroke in the event of a successful uprising at the centre, or of a revolt in the army. But except in very rare and special cases, the exploiters cannot be destroyed at one stroke. It is impossible to expropriate all the landowners and capitalists of any big country at one stroke. Furthermore, expropriation alone, as a legal or political act, does not settle the matter by a long chalk, because it is necessary to depose the landowners and capitalists in actual fact, to replace their management of the factories and estates by a different management, workers’ management, in actual fact. There can be no equality between the exploiters—who for many generations have been better off because of their education, conditions of wealthy life, and habits—and the exploited, the majority of whom even in the most advanced and most democratic bourgeois republics are downtrodden, backward, ignorant, intimidated and disunited. For a long time after the revolution the exploiters inevitably continue to retain a number of great practical advantages: they still have money (since it is impossible to abolish money all at once); some movable property—often fairly considerable; they still have various connections, habits of organisation and management; knowledge of all the “secrets” (customs, methods, means and possibilities) of management; superior education; close connections with the higher technical personnel (who live and think like the bourgeoisie); incomparably greater experience in the art of war (this is very important), and so on and so forth.

If the exploiters are defeated in one country only—and this, of course, is typical, since a simultaneous revolution in a number of countries is a rare exception—they still remain stronger than the exploited, for the international connections of the exploiters are enormous. That a section of the exploited from the least advanced middle-peasant, artisan and similar groups of the population may, and indeed does, follow the exploiters has been proved by all revolutions, including the Commune (for there were also proletarians among the Versailles troops, which the most learned Kautsky has “forgotten”).

In these circumstances, to assume that in a revolution which is at all profound and serious the issue is decided simply by the relation between the majority and the minority is the acme of stupidity, the silliest prejudice of a common liberal, an attempt to deceive the people by concealing from them a well-established historical truth. This historical truth is that in every profound revolution, the prolonged, stubborn and desperate resistance of the exploiters, who for a number of years retain important practical advantages over the exploited, is the rule. Never—except in the sentimental fantasies of the sentimental fool Kautsky—will the exploiters submit to the decision of the exploited majority without trying to make use of their advantages in a last desperate battle, or series of battles.

The transition from capitalism to communism takes an entire historical epoch. Until this epoch is over, the exploiters inevitably cherish the hope of restoration, and this hope turns into attempts at restoration. After their first serious defeat, the overthrown exploiters—who had not expected their overthrow, never believed it possible, never conceded the thought of it—throw themselves with energy grown tenfold, with furious passion and hatred grown a hundredfold, into the battle for the recovery of the “paradise”, of which they were deprived, on behalf of their families, who had been leading such a sweet and easy life and whom now the “common herd” is condemning to ruin and destitution (or to “common” labour . . .). In the train of the capitalist exploiters follow the wide sections of the petty bourgeoisie, with regard to whom decades of historical experience of all countries testify that they vacillate and hesitate, one day marching behind the proletariat and the next day taking fright at the difficulties of the revolution; that they become panic-stricken at the first defeat or semidefeat of the workers, grow nervous, run about aimlessly, snivel, and rush from one camp into the other—just like our Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries.

In these circumstances, in an epoch of desperately acute war, when history presents the question of whether age-old and thousand-year-old privileges are to be or not to be–at such a time to talk about majority and minority, about pure democracy, about dictatorship being unnecessary and about equality between the exploiter and the exploited! What infinite stupidity and abysmal philistinism are needed for this!

...

The indispensable characteristic, the necessary condition of dictatorship is the forcible suppression of the exploiters as a class, and, consequently, the infringement of “pure democracy”, i.e., of equality and freedom, in regard to that class.

This is the way, the only way, the question can be put theoretically. And by failing to put the question thus, Kautsky has shown that he opposes the Bolsheviks not as a theoretician, but as a sycophant of the opportunists and the bourgeoisie.

In which countries, and given what national features of capitalism, democracy for the exploiters will be in one or another form restricted (wholly or in part), infringed upon, is a question of the specific national features of this or that capitalism, of this or that revolution. The theoretical question is different: Is the dictatorship of the proletariat possible without infringing democracy in relation to the exploiting class?

It is precisely this question, the only theoretically important and essential one, that Kautsky has evaded. He has quoted all sorts of passages from Marx and Engels, except those which bear on this question, and which I quoted above.

Kautsky talks about anything you like, about everything that is acceptable to liberals and bourgeois democrats and does not go beyond their circle of ideas, but he does not talk about the main thing, namely, the fact that the proletariat cannot achieve victory without breaking the resistance of the bourgeoisie, without forcibly suppressing its adversaries, and that, where there is “forcible suppression”, where there is no “freedom”, there is, of course, no democracy.