#Reform or Revolution

[phobic-human]

"People who pronounce themselves in favor of the method of legislative reform in place of and in contradistinction to the conquest of political power and social revolution, do not really choose a more tranquil, calmer and slower road to the same goal, but a different goal. Instead of taking a stand for the establishment of a new society they take a stand for surface modifications of the old society. . . . Our program becomes not the realization of Socialism, but the reform of capitalism not the suppression of the system of wage labor, but the diminution of exploitation, that is, the suppression of the abuses of capitalism instead of the suppression of capitalism itself."

- Rosa Luxemburg, Social Reform or Revolution (1899)

[puppypalice]

Rosa Luxemburg might be my favorite communists theorists because like half of her works feel like they could be modern day ml tumblr posts. Reform or Revolution, that’s just every argument between a social democrat and a “tankie”. Marxist theory and the proletariat, basically all non Marxist sociology is either A, a really poor criticism of marx b, dialectics but bad c, absolutely incoherent. And that’s just to give a few examples. Tbh I think if I could talk to her today she’s probably just be like “has the landscape of politics not changed at all” and I’d be like, well instead of blamquist we have Maoists and instead of Bernstein we have Bernie sanders so honstly no. However the Lenin was right virtually all the time so theirs that. Also I think she’s be chill with transgender puppy girls.

[pinsforfingerz]

Finally finished Reform or Revolution by Rosa Luxemburg

[theshatterednotes]

Rosa Luxemburg

[itslianotlea]

remember kids

the moment a demsoc or socdem calls you a factionalist, you are on the right track

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"C.C.F. BAN ON 'REDS'," Vancouver Sun. May 29, 1934. Page 1 & 2. --- By Canadian Press VICTORIA, May 29. - Taking a cue from what has happened in the East, Rev. Robert Connell, leader of the C. C. F. opposition in the Legislature, read Communists out of the Co-operative Commonwealth movement in British Columbia, Monday evening, in a clear-cut address before Victoria clubs of the organization. Speaking to an audience in the Maccabees Hall, the Parliamentary leader of the C. C. F. in this Province made himself unmistakably clear on the point.

Agitation, strikes, and advocacy of the overthrow of the state by force were no part of the machinery, thought or aims of the C. C. F. party, he said. Neither, he continued, were dictatorships, fascism, nor other forms of militarized states.

The Co-operative Commonwealth was Socialism, and its federation proposed the assumption of power in Canada by constitutional means solely. On this basis only would the C. C. F. appeal for public support, Rev. Mr. Connell said.

Talk of violence, from the moderate forms of direct action to the extremes of street fighting, was not only folly, but was doing active damage to the C. C. F. movement, he declared.

CONSTITUTIONAL MEANS The parliamentary group of the party in the House, and the Provincial Executive of the movement, were convinced that a change in the economic system could be brought about only by constitutional means, and that after winning the support of a majority of the people.

Steady strides had been made, he said, in winning the confidence and support of British Columbia voters, evidence to him on his recent tour of thirty centres in northern parts of the Province, and this work should be continued.

It should be explained at the outset that the C. C. F. stood for Socialism, and its application by constitutional methods.

The leader of the opposition gave an interesting description of his tour through northern ridings, in company with Ernest Bakewell, C. C. F. member for Mackenzie.

SURPRISE FOR LIBERALS An election in the north today would furnish the Liberal administration with a vast surprise, he declared. After an address of an hour and a half, Rev. Mr. Connell responded to questions from the floor.

[eelhound]

"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:

If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?

This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).

But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."

- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.

[pratchettquotes]

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.

Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

[progressivemillennial]

[last-tarrasque]

I’m sorry but do you know what reformist means? Any change that does not result in a qualitative transformation of the superstructure or the base of society is reformist in nature, because it is quantitative, not qualitative. That is what these words mean. Not all quantitative reforms are negative, but the reductions of socialism to quantitative reforms is not in the interests of the proletariat and does not advance the cause of socialist revolution. It is as chairman Mao said, revisionism of the highest order.

im sorry but is that werido really saying that ending homelessness and hunger are "reformist demands not in touch with workers" ??? lmao???

they haven't thought that far through, they just needed to establish the reforms can be bad, so they can hate who they already wanted to hate

[fourwingedwriter]

There's a certain type of grief only immortals are really privy to.

Sure, there's the jarring reality of living longer than everyone you will ever love, but what about being the only one who will ever remember them?

They meant nothing to the world and will always mean nothing, but to the immortal? They were the world. They were everything. They were love, sadness, grief, joy. They were life itself and now they're nothing. Less than nothing.

An immortal is simply a record of all they have loved, all that is lost to the world.

[dankmemes23]

[empirearchives]

Paris Fire Brigade — The fire department of the city of Paris

The Paris Fire Brigade was created by Napoleon on 18 September 1811 after a devastating fire in Paris in 1810. The brigade remains the same firefighting service of Paris to this day.

Illustrations created by Aaron Martinet between 1807 and 1814. Top: Imperial Guard, Engineer Sapper. Bottom: Imperial Guard, Officer of Engineer Sappers. These were the military positions which were transitioned into the fire department.

The deadly fire at the Austrian embassy ball in July 1810, during the festivities for his marriage to Marie Louise, reminded the Emperor of the importance of a well-functioning fire service in the capital.

Despite the courage and dedication of the gardes pompes [firefighters of the old organization], who are sometimes falsely accused of numerous shortcomings, the firefighting service revealed its weaknesses: delays, insufficient and unreliable equipment, poorly trained personnel and incompetent managers. The staff present at the embassy on the day of the tragedy were cleared of all suspicion by an investigation led by the Count of Montalivet. On the other hand, the leaders of the old organization were dismissed, and the corps des gardes pompes was abolished.

After this catastrophe, the Emperor reorganized this public service by creating the first military corps of firefighters, made up of the engineers from the Imperial Guard who were dedicated to defending the imperial chateaux against fire.

At the behest of Emperor Napoleon I, the creation of the Paris fire department [bataillon de sapeurs pompiers de Paris] by imperial decree on 18 September 1811 was an original and innovative step, marking the transition from a civil and municipal organization to a military body. The choice of such an atypical status for a public service echoes the creation, eleven years earlier, of the Paris Police Prefecture, an equally singular legal administrative body.

From its creation, this military corps was placed under the authority of the Paris Police Prefecture, who was responsible for the security of the capital. After a long process, this military status and subordination to a prefect became the logical consequence of the spirit of the decree of 12 messidor year 8.

When the battalion was formed in 1811, the Paris fire department took on a new mission: fighting fires, the importance and development of which they were still unaware of.

Four companies were then created to respond to fires. Relying on a typically military functional triptych (extensive training of men, systematic technological research and implementation of efficient operational procedures), the battalion quickly made its new environment its own, and by the end of the second half of the 19th century, had become a model for the organization of public fire-fighting services and a national, even international reference.

Several fire chiefs succeeded one another until 1814. At that date, command was entrusted to battalion commander Plazanet. He provided the battalion with an instruction manual, made it compulsory for sappers to be stationed in barracks, and introduced gymnastics to train efficient and daring rescuers.

Source: Brigade de sapeurs-pompiers de Paris — Le Bataillon

Picture source: Napoleon's Army: 1807-1814 as Depicted in the Prints of Aaron Martinet, By Guy C. Dempsey, Jr., (Section: Support Troops)

[charlataninred]

God I suddenly understand the frustration of leftist infighting so much more now I just had an almost hour long conversation w some other socialists trying to explain why I don’t think mutual aid is in opposition to organizing protests and strikes and fighting back etc

I even started saying stuff like “listen, I’m not gonna change your mind, you’re not gonna change mine” in an attempt to move on but nooooo

[divorcedwife]

i feel like the default period for historical AUs is the regency era, but personally i always want to drop people in 1780s france, for maximum drama

[anotherhumaninthisworld]

There is another measure to be taken. There exists in Paris a class of individuals who, despite the weakness of their sex, do a lot of harm to the Republic. They corrupt your young men; and instead of making them vigorous and worthy of the ancient Spartans, they only make them into Sibarites incapable of serving liberty: I am talking about these immodest women who make a shameful trafficking of their charms. It is a plague on society, and any good government should banish it from its midst. I ask that the Committee of Public Safety examine whether it would not be useful to stifle this germ of counter-revolution, by deporting these women of bad habits beyond the seas (applauds).

Jean-Bon-Saint-André at the Convention, September 5 1793

Banishing someone from their home country for being too much of a slut? Yeah that sounds about right…