Both are true, but Marx’s quote references revolution as a social and historical phenomenon and Che’s quote talks about an individual’s approach to revolution.
Definitely. To take what he says literally without nuance is basically the economism of Bernstein et al.
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does a revolution stop being possible when the soldiers that oppose it have tanks or planes or submarines or chemical weapons or even nukes or missiles, clearly not. why would “autonomous” weapon systems be any different, they still have to be made and maintained by someone and they still have to be directed by someone. Drones and “robots” are just new weapons there are still people behind them. And if u are warried about ai that can potential replace people in all those roles 1 there is no actual ai and we are not even anywhere near actual ai (like there is nothing in the horizon that even indicates that it could be possible) but even if we were an ai that can do everything humans can, can well… do everything a human can including being mad about its own material conditions. Besides if anything a technology that allows for capitalists law to be upheld by fewer people under normal circumstances, pushes more people into a position where they would benefit from a revolution.
Also why would it even matter the red army didnt win because the white army felt bad about what they were upholding, Fidel’s march on Habana didnt succeed because batista’s fascists goons felt bad about what they were doing it.
artificially intelligent killer drones owned by the bourg?
With the power of kung-fu fighting.
Maybe it’s best not to make up sci-fi scenarios and instead work with what we have here and now, or at least with the predictions we can make solidly regarding the immediate future. Sure, Marx’s analysis is not independent of all contexts, but to determine that you need your context to exist in the first place.
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To put it another way, capitalists do indeed dig their own grave, but we workers need to push them in and bury the casket.
Centrism, but actually based.
Nice analogy though.
To put it in another way: they sell us the rope to hang them with—the rope doesn’t just do that on its own (unless you’re Jeffrey Epstein).
“What is scientific socialism without the working-class movement? — A compass which, if left unused, will only grow rusty and then will have to be thrown overboard.
What is the working-class movement without socialism?—A ship without a compass which will reach the other shore in any case, but would reach it much sooner and with less danger if it had a compass.
Combine the two and you will get a splendid vessel, which will speed straight towards the other shore and reach its haven unharmed.”
Needless to say, i am team stalin.For the second paragraph, will it reach the other shore though because it seems that the working class is voting for fascists now?
Yes it will, no matter how bleak the current context looks/feels/is, it’s still a very insignificant portion of history.
Hmmm… I am still not 100% convinced that without socialism the working class movement would reach the other shore though.
For instance, see how syndicalism got us nowhere and how the bourgeoisie just took away all the concession they gave syndicates post cold war. See how Black Lives Matter didn’t achieve a bigger change due to its lack of association with socialism. The capitalists just defanged the moment and gave bare-minimum concessions to apease the people.
It seems that the working-class movements without socialism are boats that get sunk by the bourgeois missiles and torpedoes.
We need both socialism and the working-class movement to get to the other shore.
The working class movement is more significant in the long run than electoral politics
There are no contradiction here. Marx only states that capitalism will create the material condition for a revolution, he does not imply that it will magically happen.
Heaven and Earth change, but it is Man’s will to seize the opportunity.
The fall is inevitable because it creates revolutionaries. But it’s up to the revolutionaries to take action.
they’re not necessarily opposing viewpoints. revolution can be inevitable whilst still requiring a human action to start it
100 years after the communist manifesto, it was clear the revolution was like an olive tree, it needs some shaking to drop the olives.
The idea that the proletarian revolution was just going to happen was Kautsky, attributing revisionism to Marx is a take
Kautsky
Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight is a communist?
Yeah, that tracks, I guess.
I think both are true. People do have to put on work, but that people will do that is inevitable
Not trying to read too much into this if it’s a joke, etc.
But
Marx was stating as an absolute statement of what he viewed as fact (and seems to be correct over a long enough timeline) that capitalism will fail due to contradictions
The Che quote is the less philosophical, more “in the shit” statement. Much like Lenin before him, these guys understood that the contradictions of capitalism lead inevitably, as Marx was getting at, to failures and collapses and it’s at those moments that revolutionaries spring up and rile their base of support within the labor force of the country. Until that moment of crisis things were bad, but tolerable. During the crisis, conditions are intolerable and people are willing to do anything, including overthrowing the government/capitalist class and possibly dying for that cause. Because the alternative is death anyway. Or a living death.
On a side note, this is why there will never be (for any foreseeable future) a socialist revolution in the US. 1) material conditions are broadly “good” (although they are worsening) 2) there is effectively no leftist political movement in the US. There are a few thousand people who are genuinely anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and want a revolution, but that might as well be zero in a country this size. Not anything new or crazy to point out that as people’s conditions worsen further they will turn towards more and more radical leftist ideas or right wing ideas. Considering the racist undercurrents of the US and lack of any desire for any international cooperation amongst workers mixed with the (unfortunately extremely effective) FBI/CIA ops against US leftists in the past, there’s only really one path that we’re likely to head down…
I think it is both. People are naturally the most revolutionary in times of crisis and struggle. It is the conditions which are created by the capitalist system that make the people feel that the system they live under is untenable, especially with rapid changes in conditions as experienced during financial crises. Many within the bourgeoise study the instability of capitalism in order to protect their capital or to profit from it.
Marx’ unchecked supremacism lead him to a lot of really bad conclusions all of which ended up being wrong. Most famous being his support for a “dictatorship of the proletariat” which he later turned his back on when he saw one in action, realizing that democracy was the only way forward. Nowadays marxists say “Oh no he meant like, dictatorship as in the proles have the means of production” because it’s an easier sell than saying that he DID mean a literal dictatorship but then later went back on it, because ultimately it communicates the same point anyway.
Really you should listen to Marx for his stellar economic expertise and as a starting point for gaining political literacy, and throw everything else in the trash where it belongs. Marxism is a lot more than just one guy, and if you stop at just him you’re not getting the full picture. There’s a reason they call it Scientific Socialism and not Great Man Dogmatism.
Yeah, but they’re both dead now, so why should we listen to anything either of them said?
