• commiespammer@lemmygrad.ml
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    3 months ago

    What matters is if it is actually actionably reactionary. Confucianism, being a philosophy and not a religion, really loses wiggle room that religions have in terms of benign beliefs like “mee-maw is looking down on me from Heaven” or whatever. It’s almost entirely things that have real, practical significance, like filial piety and ren (which are reactionary).

    I think this is a very poor interpretation of confucianism. Confucianism as a political system, used by feudal rulers to enforce control over society, has been practically completed rooted out, and most of the reactionary elements you mention are more complicated than you make them seem… Are they reactionary? Maybe partially, but a respect for parents doesn’t mean that Chinese will take shit from the people raising them lying down, and likewise ren doesn’t mean they’ll let people walk over them. Confucius himself discussed these concepts in his original teachings, where you can clearly see that he gives different concepts to different students depending on their own situations, which I would argue ironically is the best approach to applying marxism to various movements today.