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"We're anti-sectarian!"
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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But he did write quite extensively on Lumpenproletariat.
That is quite a few groups he considered subhuman, where half the ‘cleansing’ operations under communism have derived their theoretical excuses from.
The point of the Lumpenproletariat isn't that they're subhuman, it's that they lack cohesiveness as a class or revolutionary potential.
Well - here’s the thing with “lacking revolutionary potential” and a dear-leader mindset.. anyone dear leader deems lacking is labeled lumpen and thrown to the furthest gulag or has their rights removed and confined.
Eg in Stalinist Russia certain groups like the Roma, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Koreans or homosexuals were labeled as such wholesale.
In modern times the Uighurs need reeducation etc.
Thing is, Marx didn't have a Dear Leader mindset. Far from it. He is, in fact, focused on broad, sweeping, materialist strokes, something that has not survived quite as well as the more general ideas he advocated. When Marx talks about lacking revolutionary potential, he simply means that they aren't going to be the instrumental class pushing the revolution forward. Peasants also lack revolutionary potential by Marx's analysis, but few Marxists, if any, would advocate murdering them en masse.
By contrast, Marxism-Leninism thinks peasants DO have revolutionary potential, but tends to kill them en masse.
First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.
But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.
That is, it doesn’t matter what he wrote or believed in his heart of hearts if it can be interpreted in such broad strokes as to allow the implementation of the dear leader mindset with his writings as a touchstone without fail.
And it doesn’t matter what he thought should be done with the lumpen elements if he thought of them as less than, disgusting, parasitical, and even objecting to the cause, (his writings certainly show disgust in my opinion) - true believers to the cause will see them (as they have) as obstacles and will do whatever needs to be done to remove them - as they have.
And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class, will you concede the point or would I be wasting my time?
what
I’m not sure what you had trouble grasping - I explained the thought in detail in the paragraph following.
I don’t see how making the same horrible comments about another whole class of people counteracts the horrible comment about others.
“Your honour, and if I show that my client stole from other shops, not just the one he is being prosecuted for, wouldn’t you concede that that negates the theft from this shop?”