nightbreed
Im Bored
5, 10, 15, 20 years dependent on the objective and subjective factors etc, etc, etc......
When will "The Revolution" happen?
- Thread starter chilango
- Start date
urbanrevolt
New Member
Nigel said:I rest my case!!!!!
TOSSER
So Nigel thinks it so laughable that ordinary working class people can run our own affairs that he doesn't bother coming out with any arguments at all- just abuse.
However, as others have argued history has many examples of working class people organising together to bring about social change.
The idea that capitalism will always be with us and that the social relations will be ever frozen is an unfoundecd mystical belief.
urbanrevolt
New Member
Maggot said:
That's a quibble over temrinology mainly but what you're referring to could be a coup d'etat. Revolution as understood on here- at least the Marxist concept of revolution which I presume is what people are mainly talking about- is a change of what class are running society.
dennisr
the acceptable face
Nigel said:I've already left the asylum!!!!!!!!!!!!!
but you have forgoton to take your medicine again and chucked your toys out of the pram haven't you?
ps urban comes across as a reasonable and rational person with plenty of TU and workplace experience - regardless of my personal political differences with him - s/hes not a cliffite type ejet. s/hes alright, you know
Nigel
For A Degenerates' Workers State
Comes across using the same dogma and rhetoric that puts most people off socialist politics. My experience with SWP is that they are politically destructive in anything they get their hands on. That Trotskyism is by and large an opportunistic creed that if it did have any significance is out dated and outmoded!!!!
Anyway, why should I give a flying fuck what you think!!!!!
Anyway, why should I give a flying fuck what you think!!!!!
urbanrevolt said:
Good post i think. But i'm not quite convinced. I think the idea of a revolution is attrcative but a bit p[ast its sell by date.
I support the idea of a massive redistribution of wealth and power nationally and internationally.
BUT BUT BUT for me the thing is that i can not see it happening overnight or in some great revoluationary sweep of power but gradually.
I think people need to fight for sustainable cahnge that gives more wealth and power to people generally.
And i do think most people who describe themselves as revolutionaries believe in a load of top down shitty mixture of Liberalism and Stalinism...
dennisr
the acceptable face
Nigel said:Yuo have'nt put your option in the poll: when will the revoltion happen???
its been put back a couple of weeks (organisational problems - the crisis of leadership and suchlike). hopefully, thursday week if its warm and they are not playing a whole evening of QI on the Dave channel.
All those options are possible - not all likely though.
urbanrevolt
New Member
tbaldwin said:
I am not sure I can 'see' it either but isn't that because we live in profoundly unrevolutionary times- in Europe at least- in the last 15 years or so. To have real bottom-up democratic change will of course take a lot of slow patient systematic work of building up networks of resistance etc, collectives run in a participatory democratic manner. So in that sense it will take years, decades may be, of pateint hard work.
However, the change will probably also be quite dramatic as the powers that be seem very solid until enough people have neough confidence to assault them on several fronts and at a crucial juncture when it looks like it can't last anymore that's whn tyrannical regimes suddenly fall- long patient systemtaic work to undermine their foundations and to already have in place new democratic structures of sturggle and participation to replace them.
As for your and others' points on the left- I agree much of the old left has to be left behind to rediscover and invent a socialism based on real workers' democracy.
SpookyFrank
Don't swallow the cap
Hopefully never, as I am an anarchist so I'll probably be shot by the socialists after fighting side by side with them in the streets for a common cause 
urbanrevolt
New Member
What is your common cause? If its for the working class to have power then what you are describing is a counter-revolution. Of course the current ruling class at the time will try to launch this but it is therfore all the more important to make sure that we have a working clas conscious of its own power and mobilised to prevent its revolution from being stolen, derailed or smashed
London Boy
New Member
And every single historical example of a revolution that is allegedly carried out in the name of the working class has either ended up being destroyed and stillborn (Spain and others come to mind here) or these revolutions turning into totalitarian nightmares (the Russian revolution and China and a few others) which have produced societies more oppresive and worse than the capitalist ones they claimed were in need of replacing.
Even when those who want revolution claim that they are going to replace the existing society with a better one, it hardly ever works out that way.
Hopefully people in Britain would never be as stupid to be fooled by the extreme left into such a murderous and awful situtation as a 'revolution' as totalitarianism or outright chaos and destruction would be the only two alternatives, neither being desirable.
SpookyFrank
Don't swallow the cap
urbanrevolt said:
The common cause would be abolishing the apparatus of power; sadly the socialists only want to put a new and infintitely more preachy and irritating apparatus of power in its place the first chance they get. Perhaps the enemy of my enemy is not my friend after all...
London Boy
New Member
And in Britain we are not ruled by an absolute monarch, an occuping power or a dictator and the OP asked when a 'revolution' would break out in Britain.
And whilst the Czar was a incompetent fool, a poor war leader and a buffoon who did not ever know the needs of is people and/or how to address their suffering, in terms of oppression and the total death toll, the soviet state can hardly be called an improvement on the Czarist system can it.
The same can be said for Pol Pot, Mao or any other totalitarian system.
History has shown that revolutions are blood soaked and have failed to live up to what they even promise, making the killing they cause even more futile as it cannot even be justified as a means to an end to a better society.
I am going to say that NO political/economic system is going to be perfect and able to address every single problem that we all face. But the solutions that usually come about via revolutions tend to be worse than the procedding ones, the post revolutionary society more bloody and less free than the former.
Based on past experience, I cannot accept the ideal of revolution nor can I believe those who say that mistakes were made last time and that this time things will be done better, it seldom works like that.
London Boy
New Member
We have all of those things already in Britain, without the need for a 'revolution'/mass bloodshed.
urbanrevolt
New Member
So someone asks is it possible for the working class to ever come to power and others say no it would always mean it being derailed, always mean bloodshed, always mean others taking power in the name of the working class.
How do they know? These things are risks and have happened but that doesn't mean it's impossible for working class people to seize power for oursleves and create organs of struggle for ourselves.
All those people who say this can never be are like those who used to say in feudal times it's impossible to live in a society without a king- ordinary people are too stupid to run our own lives.
Well I don't agree that we're too stupid or its beyond th eken of humanity to work out how to run our own lives in a sustainable manner based on freedom and equality.
There is an elite who dearly want us to believ eit's impossible and some gullible enough to fall for their tricks but that doesn't mean it's inevitable
How do they know? These things are risks and have happened but that doesn't mean it's impossible for working class people to seize power for oursleves and create organs of struggle for ourselves.
All those people who say this can never be are like those who used to say in feudal times it's impossible to live in a society without a king- ordinary people are too stupid to run our own lives.
Well I don't agree that we're too stupid or its beyond th eken of humanity to work out how to run our own lives in a sustainable manner based on freedom and equality.
There is an elite who dearly want us to believ eit's impossible and some gullible enough to fall for their tricks but that doesn't mean it's inevitable
London Boy said:
Equally you'd have to be pretty stupid to not acknowledge that the majority in Russia were better off twenty years ago than they are now.
London Boy said:
No. The threat of revolution was very much in the mind of the petite bourgeoisie who had come to dominate the Commons. It was this and the wish for a healthy pool of recruits for the war machine that improved the lot of the people in Britain in the twentieth century.
Johnny Canuck3
Well-Known Member
When the comet hits.
free spirit
more tea vicar?
yep, that's the oneSpookyFrank said:Hopefully never, as I am an anarchist so I'll probably be shot by the socialists after fighting side by side with them in the streets for a common cause
I never really thought that kind of thinking actually existed among the left in the UK til a few of the dissent mob bumped into some of the G8 Alternative's bods in a pub in the run up to the G8. A bit of friendly banter ended with the G8 alternatives bods actually using the 'come the revolution your lot would be first against the wall' line, and I believe they were serious.
pretty sure I'd be emigrating pretty fast if the swappies ever actually managed to stage a revolution. Not particularly worried about that particular scenario ever actually happening mind.
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