bourgeois and proletarian revolutions

[BH]

Hello.

Why does it seem that the bourgeois revolutions against aristocracy tended to lead to permanent social and economic change whereas the proletarian revolutions not so much.

 

[untermensche]

Hello.

Why does it seem that the bourgeois revolutions against aristocracy tended to lead to permanent social and economic change whereas the proletarian revolutions not so much.

Examples?

 

[zorq]

Hello.

Why does it seem that the bourgeois revolutions against aristocracy tended to lead to permanent social and economic change whereas the proletarian revolutions not so much.

Examples?

Right, there are a lot of failed revolutions of all types throughout history, but a couple proletarian revolutions stick out as causing a significant social and economic change. The 1917 communist revolution in the Russian Empire and the and the Chinese communist revolution of 1949 were pretty significant both culturally and economically.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Hello.

Why does it seem that the bourgeois revolutions against aristocracy tended to lead to permanent social and economic change whereas the proletarian revolutions not so much.

Examples?

Right, there are a lot of failed revolutions of all types throughout history, but a couple proletarian revolutions stick out as causing a significant social and economic change. The 1917 communist revolution in the Russian Empire and the and the Chinese communist revolution of 1949 were pretty significant both culturally and economically.

I think that it's pretty simple. The majority in 1917 Russia and 1949 China were miserable and had no hope. The majority in western Europe and the US and Canada aren't miserable and do have hope.

 

[untermensche]

In the 1930's there were a lot of people in the US that were miserable.

Capitalism could have collapsed entirely.

Roosevelt propped it up massively with the government. Then WWII really propped it up.

The US government has been propping it up with the MIC (military/industrial complex) ever since.

In 2003 the US government attacked a nation that was not attacking anyone to massively support the MIC and thus the stability of capitalism.

 

[PyramidHead]

Hello.

Why does it seem that the bourgeois revolutions against aristocracy tended to lead to permanent social and economic change whereas the proletarian revolutions not so much.

Examples?

Right, there are a lot of failed revolutions of all types throughout history, but a couple proletarian revolutions stick out as causing a significant social and economic change. The 1917 communist revolution in the Russian Empire and the and the Chinese communist revolution of 1949 were pretty significant both culturally and economically.

Yeah but they didn't stick, that's the point the OP was making I think. They are also both in the last century, so relatively young by historical standards compared to say the French and American revolutions against the monarchy. I think it's all a matter of material conditions; revolutions don't just spontaneously succeed or fail due to anything about the class of the revolutionaries, there's a lot of context to appreciate. Some would argue that the kind of revolution that would truly result in durable changes for the proles would, by necessity, have to take place in most or all of the world at the same time, otherwise the counterrevolution would easily crush it. History certainly seems to support this take. Stalin's programme for Russia was departure from that reasoning, in its declaration of "socialism in one country" having arrived at last, when of course it was far from it.

 

[Trausti]

Right, there are a lot of failed revolutions of all types throughout history, but a couple proletarian revolutions stick out as causing a significant social and economic change. The 1917 communist revolution in the Russian Empire and the and the Chinese communist revolution of 1949 were pretty significant both culturally and economically.

Yeah but they didn't stick, that's the point the OP was making I think. They are also both in the last century, so relatively young by historical standards compared to say the French and American revolutions against the monarchy. I think it's all a matter of material conditions; revolutions don't just spontaneously succeed or fail due to anything about the class of the revolutionaries, there's a lot of context to appreciate. Some would argue that the kind of revolution that would truly result in durable changes for the proles would, by necessity, have to take place in most or all of the world at the same time, otherwise the counterrevolution would easily crush it. History certainly seems to support this take. Stalin's programme for Russia was departure from that reasoning, in its declaration of "socialism in one country" having arrived at last, when of course it was far from it.

No, no. Russia got Socialism, good and hard.

 

[untermensche]

The Soviet Union got dictatorship. They got Stalinism.

It never got Socialism which is not top down dictatorship.

 

[PyramidHead]

Right, there are a lot of failed revolutions of all types throughout history, but a couple proletarian revolutions stick out as causing a significant social and economic change. The 1917 communist revolution in the Russian Empire and the and the Chinese communist revolution of 1949 were pretty significant both culturally and economically.

Yeah but they didn't stick, that's the point the OP was making I think. They are also both in the last century, so relatively young by historical standards compared to say the French and American revolutions against the monarchy. I think it's all a matter of material conditions; revolutions don't just spontaneously succeed or fail due to anything about the class of the revolutionaries, there's a lot of context to appreciate. Some would argue that the kind of revolution that would truly result in durable changes for the proles would, by necessity, have to take place in most or all of the world at the same time, otherwise the counterrevolution would easily crush it. History certainly seems to support this take. Stalin's programme for Russia was departure from that reasoning, in its declaration of "socialism in one country" having arrived at last, when of course it was far from it.

No, no. Russia got Socialism, good and hard.

https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?17806-The-government-doing-things-is-not-socialism

 

[dismal]

The Soviet Union got dictatorship. They got Stalinism.

It never got Socialism which is not top down dictatorship.

Right, socialists thought it was socialism at the time but once it went to shit it was obviously a place where socialism was never tried. Rinse and repeat. Every time.

The real issue we need to crack is how can we:

A) let the people who claim to be socialists and are widely defended by socialists take power.
B) avoid becoming a place where socialism was never tried

No one has managed this yet. Millions have ended up starving and in camps.

 

[untermensche]

The Soviet Union got dictatorship. They got Stalinism.

It never got Socialism which is not top down dictatorship.

Right, socialists thought it was socialism at the time but once it went to shit it was obviously a place where socialism was never tried. Rinse and repeat. Every time.

The real issue we need to crack is how can we:

A) let the people who claim to be socialists and are widely defended by socialists take power.
B) avoid becoming a place where socialism was never tried

No one has managed this yet. Millions have ended up starving and in camps.

The US murdered millions in Vietnam and Cambodia.

People calling themselves socialists are not the major problem.

 

[PyramidHead]

The Soviet Union got dictatorship. They got Stalinism.

It never got Socialism which is not top down dictatorship.

Right, socialists thought it was socialism at the time but once it went to shit it was obviously a place where socialism was never tried. Rinse and repeat. Every time.

Nope, it was actually the reverse. Lenin said "this is state capitalism, we're on our way to socialism" and then died. Trotsky agreed with him for the most part, then got killed by Stalin. Stalin saw that everybody was miserable, so he decided to simply declare socialism as arrived. This backfired when everybody started seeing the high standard of living in their non-socialist counterparts.

The real issue we need to crack is how can we:

A) let the people who claim to be socialists and are widely defended by socialists take power.
B) avoid becoming a place where socialism was never tried

No one has managed this yet. Millions have ended up starving and in camps.

I suppose one way to do that is to stop obsessing over the words people use to describe themselves and their policies, and start asking what those policies actually are. In much the same way that "democratic" is used by any podunk authoritarian regime looking for better optics, "socialist" was co-opted by all sorts of folks for the same reasons. You can call it whatever you want; but to be opposed to someone who says they favor the democratic organization of production and distribution of wealth without the middle-men of CEOs and boards of directors, because you think they want state-run industries where everybody obeys the decree of party officials, is to make an elementary mistake.

Incidentally, socialism was tried in one part of Soviet Russia. After the landowners started demanding more consumer goods from the industrial sector, Stalin divided their plots into two types of operations: state-owned farms and collective farms. The state-owned farms made all the food for factory workers, while the collective ones got to democratically decide what to do with their product, which they owned. I'll let you take a stab at which of those was socialism, and how long it lasted before being overtaken by the other kind.

 

[steve_bank]

What bourgeois revolutions do you mean? The term is obsolete at least as used by Marx. Today it is more a pejorative term for middle class.

What proletariat revolutions?

Bourgeois and proletariat are loaded words.

Some drivers for social and economic change were the Industrial Revolution and mandated primary education. I don't know if you could call the American colonies bourgeois. The standard of living was high, the revolution was minority.

Colonists with no name or resources could and did eventually got land in the colonies. Same with the westward migration. Land was given away by the govt.

 

[Tigers!]

The Soviet Union got dictatorship. They got Stalinism.

It never got Socialism which is not top down dictatorship.

Right, socialists thought it was socialism at the time but once it went to shit it was obviously a place where socialism was never tried. Rinse and repeat. Every time.

The real issue we need to crack is how can we:

A) let the people who claim to be socialists and are widely defended by socialists take power.
B) avoid becoming a place where socialism was never tried

No one has managed this yet. Millions have ended up starving and in camps.

The US murdered millions in Vietnam and Cambodia.

People calling themselves socialists are not the major problem.

What about countries that called themselves socialist? They were/are a major problem to their own people and their neighbours.

 

[Harry Bosch]

The Soviet Union got dictatorship. They got Stalinism.

It never got Socialism which is not top down dictatorship.

Right, socialists thought it was socialism at the time but once it went to shit it was obviously a place where socialism was never tried. Rinse and repeat. Every time.

The real issue we need to crack is how can we:

A) let the people who claim to be socialists and are widely defended by socialists take power.
B) avoid becoming a place where socialism was never tried

No one has managed this yet. Millions have ended up starving and in camps.

The US murdered millions in Vietnam and Cambodia.

People calling themselves socialists are not the major problem.

Americans have always loved messing with other countries. Always have, probably always will. But it's not a symptom of being capitalist. Denmark, Luxemberg, and Canada haven't invaded anyone in awhile!

 

[untermensche]

The US murdered millions in Vietnam and Cambodia.

People calling themselves socialists are not the major problem.

Americans have always loved messing with other countries. Always have, probably always will. But it's not a symptom of being capitalist. Denmark, Luxemberg, and Canada haven't invaded anyone in awhile!

Messing?

You call killing millions and poisoning their land messing?

One thing we can see is that capitalism is a dehumanizing force.

 

[Harry Bosch]

The US murdered millions in Vietnam and Cambodia.

People calling themselves socialists are not the major problem.

Americans have always loved messing with other countries. Always have, probably always will. But it's not a symptom of being capitalist. Denmark, Luxemberg, and Canada haven't invaded anyone in awhile!

Messing?

You call killing millions and poisoning their land messing?

One thing we can see is that capitalism is a dehumanizing force.

You are missing my point. The vast majority of capitalist countries don't mess with other countries. Luxembourg hasn't invaded anyone in awhile. Why do you lump all capitalist countries into the same bucket?

 

[PyramidHead]

Messing?

You call killing millions and poisoning their land messing?

One thing we can see is that capitalism is a dehumanizing force.

You are missing my point. The vast majority of capitalist countries don't mess with other countries. Luxembourg hasn't invaded anyone in awhile. Why do you lump all capitalist countries into the same bucket?

It's true that not all capitalist countries need to invade others to survive, and there is a sliding scale of imperialism to be found among the developed capitalist nations.

But ask yourself this: are the most wealthy capitalist countries the ones who were the nicest to their fellow humans across the globe? Are they the ones with the most sustainable environmental policies, the most egalitarian income distribution?

It's no coincidence that, as in the microcosm of market competition, the richest and most powerful capitalist nations are the ones who behave with muscle and leverage every advantage at their disposal to accumulate more capital, regardless of whether it pollutes the air or impoverishes their neighbors.

 

[untermensche]

Messing?

You call killing millions and poisoning their land messing?

One thing we can see is that capitalism is a dehumanizing force.

You are missing my point. The vast majority of capitalist countries don't mess with other countries. Luxembourg hasn't invaded anyone in awhile. Why do you lump all capitalist countries into the same bucket?

Capitalism has been tamed in many nations by social forces that are anti-capitalist. A safety net is anti-capitalist. Safe working conditions is anti-capitalist. Not allowing child labor is anti-capitalist. Ask the Newt.

But in the US capitalist interests reign supreme.

An invasion of a major oil producer.

And Powell tells lie after lie at the UN to justify it.

Only a child couldn't see the real motivations behind it.

Waging war in itself was profitable enough for the right people that we played at war for a decade then just left. The place much worse than before we attacked.