Surrendering to Hopelessness: Catharsis for the Modern Communist
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Hello again friends – one of my colleagues has just published an essay over on Malady:
https://philosophical-malady.blogspot.com/2021/02/surrendering-to-hopelessness-catharsis.html
Does communism or being a modern revolutionary necessarily lead to rage, anger and frustration?
Is being a modern revolutionary simply a futile, theatrical exercise?
I would be keen to hear your views, comrades at the SPGB.
M, I think the lack of response to this could be due to people here not seeing the essay as directed at them because of its opening paragraph:
“There is a propensity amongst those on the left to discuss revolution in the context of physical violence. I do not know of any communist who has not, at one time or another, spoken feverishly of toppling the old order with brutal excess.“
We don’t talk of the revolution in terms of physical violence and hanging capitalists from lampposts. Certainly there are plenty of reasons to be angry about what capitalism does to us and others and some may hate the capitalists (our early members certainly did) even though they know that it’s the system not individual capitalists that’s to blame. It seems to be by a Leninist directed at other Leninists.
On the other hand, this question of yours is perhaps more relevant:
“Is being a modern revolutionary simply a futile, theatrical exercise?”
The answer to which is obviously No! And even if it was theatrical that would not necessarily mean that it was futile.
As it happens, we had a discussion on this sort of thing a couple of months ago that can be listened to here:
Communists and leftists are not the same. The only ones who advocate for violence are the Leninists and the Anarchists. Most leftists believe that the problems of our world are due to a couple of individuals, or an ethnic group instead of the whole capitalist system
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