I am principally opposed to the death penalty. Nowadays industrial output is great enough to finance live imprisonment at humane conditions.
I’ve seen a lot of Bolshevik disrespect coming from other instances. Some apologies are in order.
Did the bolsheviks actually slaughter the rich?
I remember reading about the Killing of the Romanovsbased but even that appears to have been an aberration, as iirc communications were down and a quick decision had to be made in the absence of commands from leadership despite previous orders to just guard, in case the white army was coming to free them. Iirc even after all that a surprising number of former white army troops were integrated into the soviet army.
There was also Dekulakization but iirc the deaths there were usually resistors to the decision to distribute the food within Ukraine and food hoarding during a famine.
It is not strategically beneficial to threaten your opponent with death for surrendering. Doing so will cause them to fight to the death.
It is far better for us to have them submit to getting under the thumb of the proletarian state than it is to kill them. They can be legislated out of existence in a way that doesn’t threaten any of them personally provided they’re given no power in the state. We don’t even need to rush that, they can probably be phased out in a way that barely affects their lives.
I think at this point there’s a tension between the strategic advantage of having billionaires willing to surrender (preserves forces, results in net gain of manpower) versus how fucking stoked the majority of people are to see them die (gains new loyalists, results in net gain of manpower) and to be honest I think that someone sitting down with a pen and paper could work out an optimal percentage that could then be applied on a case by case basis. No-names with vast fortunes? Whatever, reeducation. Your Bezos’, Princes, Duponts and Langones? Written off by popular demand.
Edit: having thought about this more, I think you could even get the best of both worlds by rocking up to one of these fuhrerbunkers and announcing “We will be accepting the surrender of the employees but not the boss. In fact, any employees who feel like doing a little mutiny and bringing the boss out to us, or even just forgetting to lock the gate, will be handsomely rewarded.”
Ahh yes, the Chinese method. “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey.”
Lmao any situation you can imagine, China has already been there, done that and coined a proverb
Why can’t we be a bunch of Asians?
Western societies had (several traditions of) proverbs too, but capitalism killed 'em by smothering them out with mass media
Written off by popular demand
I actually like that. If they are so keen on algorithms, make an algorithm to determine what kind of expropriation they face.
First step is a steep inheritance/gift tax
- “we’re doing socialism now, your kids are taken care of cause everyone is taken care of”
- “good job making a few bucks, you can use your surplus on some luxuries while you’re alive. Your kids didn’t earn that, so you don’t get to just throw it at them when you die. They will have to work like everyone else (including you) if they want to be rich too”
Nah, no taxes. Taxation of the rich creates a dependency of the system on the continued existence of the rich for revenue.
It should be a discrete mass expropriation of wealth and private property. The goal is not to allow the bourgeois to remain in control of industry and capital and skim off their profits, the goal is to end their ownership entirely and directly take control ourselves. Going down the taxation route opens you up to tax strikes from the rich as well crippling state revenue.
Yeah exactly. Lay out something completely reasonable, if there are fighters then they get dealt with because fighting is obviously not allowed. The position is reasonable.
They can die with luxury and phase out without causing a wider problem provided they are completely disempowered. That disempowerment will need to be monitored for security too but I suspect most of them will just want to keep their heads down.
The next generation will probably be a bigger problem than the current one because they’re gonna be PISSED that they lost those things, but that’s a bridge to cross in years down the line. They are your future gusanos.
I’m mostly with you on that. The thought of vengeance on the bourgeoisie fills me with an indescribable ecstasy, but I’m willing to forego that in favor of practicality and improved conditions for all.
It was that way for me before and then multiple wars happened and it became so obvious how giving the opposing side ways to surrender is much more beneficial. This doesn’t just apply to violent war, it applies to class war too, with the important caveat that they must be disempowered in the same way that you would disarm any enemy surrendering in a violent war.
For certain. Momentary indulgence must always, in a rational society, be superseded by the good of all. In the end it’s self-care as well.
There was the killing of feudal landlords in China. But that was peasant led, basically once they realized there wasn’t Qing, Japanese or Nationalist forces to stop them they acted.
The communists were just let’s see how this plays out
Mao eventually sent the army to stop the red guards that were getting out of hand even. It wouldn’t have been beneficial in that moment to slap the hand of the people who were just freed from exploitation. Only once they began to threaten the process of rebuilding.
The Romanovs being murder was entirely justified, it was not done out of nowhere, it was in response to a civil war threatening to reinstate tsarism. Once people see that the “god-given rulers” can be slaughtered with a musket, they stop looking so “god-given”.
A lot of Kulak deaths took place not through direct violence, but through the dangers of deportation, as hundreds of thousands of them were deported to “new” lands in the east. Then again, life expectancy at the time was 30 years of age, so I guess starvation and disease were absolutely not exclusive to kulaks.
Justified? Certainly.
Practical? Only given the specific conditions in front of the the guards.
The best outcome? Not necessarily. The Puyi method is far more effective in the achievement of communism, in the long term.
Plenty of kulak deaths were through direct violence, but justified nonetheless. Plenty of them hoarded or even burned their own harvests to spite their new and, to them, unwelcome system. The system responded proportionally.
The Puyi method could be applied because not even the Kuomintang wanted the dynastic emperor back, that’s the difference. China had rid itself of dynastical emperors decades before the triumph of communism, that’s why they could afford to do the Puyi method.
What is the Puyi method?
Rehabilitation. Puyi was the last emperor of China
Pretty much this. When the CPC took over they reeducated Puyi, the last Emperor of China. They informed him of the things that had been done under his reign, some of which he wasn’t even aware of, most of which he was completely detached from. In the end I believe he was a gardener and custodian, which ended up being oddly liberating for him.
It’s not talked about much, partially because of the number of people who suffer significantly more on the other end of it, but it can be argued that privilege is inherently abusive. It gives people a highly distorted view of the world, such that when it inevitably crumbles people under its influence can find themselves unable to function properly. Puyi had servants all his life and even literally wiping his ass, so when he was brought to reality he had difficulty adjusting and performing even basic functions.
Puyi was the last emperor of China. When Japan invaded China he sold out, and approved whatever orders they put in front of him. After the war he was captured, forced to see the damage he had done and talk to the relatives of the people he had executed, etc. He apologised and was given a new job as a gardener. He was clumsy (since he was used to other people doing everything for him) but tried to learn gardening. He met and married an ‘ordinary’ woman - a nurse, if I remember correctly. Many years later he confessed that he was happier as a gardener than he had been as the emperor.
Emperor Puyi wasn’t executed, he was stripped of all titles and property and integrated into the proles
Should have been a lot more hangings after the US Civil War.
Reconstruction was such a missed opportunity, one of the few chances this cursed country has ever had at redemption and they just gave up
Lincoln himself said that he would preserve slavery if he could. The civil war was never about cleansing the sins of empire. After it was over, they wanted to resolve the contractions to the absolute minimum possible
It’s weird that when I say eliminate the rich, I mean take their money away. When Libs hear eliminate the rich they think the only way to do that is murder
Ok i need to ask: What does this emote mean? I see it and never get it :c
One person says “Nobody is saying that X”
Old Gramps here chimes in “I was saying X”
someone says “i’m not saying X/i wasn’t saying X” and you respond “i was saying X
”This and I also use it interchangeably with
as an emoji for feeling oldYeah I use it for feeling old because I don’t want to emote Bernie or Chomsky except at their expense
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Booourns
The rich as a class will never tolerate the expropriation without escalating to violence. So at some point they force our hand since they will not become equal peacefully
You are telling me right after I got us a new woodchipper?
Thing is, they don’t have a fundamental problem with the extermination of all members of a class. Everyone celebrates the French revolution
Honestly just have them clean the streets outside their palaces.
I mean… Speaking for myself only… But I wouldn’t shed any tears over the elimination of some rich and not just their riches
Oh yeah but the Epstein ones specifically should get scaphism
The issue is that the rich created this horrible world to secure more money and their status. They will never allow you to simply take it away. And even if you do, their children will come looking for it again and will do heinous shit to get it, again.
We don’t need to slaughter them, and we shouldn’t. They don’t fear death, they fear becoming a normal prole just like us
Of course, a portion of them will die to defend their ill gotten gains. Many of them will be found guilty of crimes deserving prison up to life sentences. I’m against death penalty but I’m not gonna shed tears when some of them inevitably face justice in a more direct fashion, from the masses (in Minecraft)
Eating them alive is certainly an option, I guess
I ain’t gonna snitch on anyone for such an act, but their fat old flesh is probably not very tasty. If I happen to come across any of their remains, I have some other ideas
I’ve long held the position that we only need to eat one billionaire. Not in a metaphorical sense.
I’ll bring the beer.
Give the least guilty among them the Puyi treatment, let them tie their own shoes, live in a little apartment and work a boring job for 30 years in a very controlled setting
Okay but we could at least brand them or ear tag them like cattle
Nah, you have to use love…
*our rich
