I’ve heard it many times from liberals who either mean the revolution would be more violent than our current system (it wouldn’t be), or suggesting that communists claim that we will achieve utopia if we’re just allowed to commit much brutality in the mean time (obviously false). This phrase annoys me so much, not just as a utilitarian, but also as someone who understands the meaning of words, as they are either suggesting that (in the moralistic sense) literally nothing is worth doing, ever, or that morality shouldn’t matter because everything is immoral anyway.

  • Marxism-Fennekinism
    34•1 year ago

    the revolution would be more violent than our current system (it wouldn’t be)

    Remember the rule of thumb:

    Killing a fifty year old aristocrat who could have lived to eighty had you not actively killed them is a killing.

    Shortening a factory worker’s life by thirty years so they die at fifty, through poverty, resource insecurity/low quality resources like cheap unhealthy food, and chronic stress and overwork, all leading to much higher risk of deadly illnesses like heart disease and cancer is an “inevetable consequence of free society!”

    Hanging a millionaire landlord and snapping their neck in one second is a killing.

    Letting a homeless person wither away over ten years until he dies is “he should have managed his finances better!”

    Shooting an investment shark who owns a private hospital in the brain is a killing.

    Denying a patient brain cancer treatment because they can’t afford it is “oh well, we can’t save everyone!”

    • @PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml
      22•1 year ago

      Shortening a factory worker’s life by thirty years so they die at fifty

      Obligatory reminder that in the half XIX century workers in England lived in such horrible conditions that in one city (Machester or Liverpool iirc) average lifespan (icluding infant mortality etc.) for member of worker family was… 15 years, and this was taken from official statistic.

      Fifteen.

      • @redtea@lemmygrad.ml
        13•1 year ago

        Another connoisseur of The Condition of the Working Class in England, I see.

        I cannot remember which city was which, either. But I remember that in the other city, the average lifespan was 17 or 19. So not much better!

    • ☭ 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗘𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗿 ☭
      20•1 year ago

      There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

      – some obscure Amerikan author, idk

    • @LVL@lemmygrad.ml
      14•1 year ago

      Reminds me of this quote from Engels on the topic of social murder.

      When one individual inflicts bodily injury upon another such that death results, we call the deed manslaughter; when the assailant knew in advance that the injury would be fatal, we call his deed murder. But when society places hundreds of proletarians in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and an unnatural death, one which is quite as much a death by violence as that by the sword or bullet; when it deprives thousands of the necessaries of life, places them under conditions in which they cannot live – forces them, through the strong arm of the law, to remain in such conditions until that death ensues which is the inevitable consequence – knows that these thousands of victims must perish, and yet permits these conditions to remain, its deed is murder just as surely as the deed of the single individual; disguised, malicious murder, murder against which none can defend himself, which does not seem what it is, because no man sees the murderer, because the death of the victim seems a natural one, since the offence is more one of omission than of commission. But murder it remains.