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.

  • @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.