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by copperheart 3317 days ago
We can only hope.
1 comments

It wasn't a good thing.
It depends; perhaps it will push people to realise that the current system of affairs is broken, and then to push people to a revolution.
The trouble with revolutions is you just end up with a new set of leaders.
Relevant Terry Pratchett quote regarding revolutions:

> 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.

-- Night Watch

I love this book. Its so- human, so deeply human. Everything falls apart, and Pratchett could have been cynical, and mocked the whole endeavor of regime change - turning Ankh Morpork into a blood bath- instead, he put grandmothers on the barricades (mind where you put the good furniture!) and the whole civil war afair ended in a happy little turmoil with free steaks and not free pasty (i m obviously ruining myself here). Always think of that book smelling Syringa

I always read that book when i despair about the species, or im hyped by something and want to get down to earth.

And dead people, and destroyed cities.

And purges, and violent warlords siezing power, and military coups.

And refugees, and food shortages, and torture chambers, and sabotage.

And unprecedented political polarization, and oh maybe disappearances and murders that look like suicides...

As much as I would like to achieve Socialism via democratic reform within the system, various figures (Emma Goldman, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, even Engels himself) have noted that working within the existing system ("bourgeois democracy") would not be sufficient to bring about lasting change, as the system itself is built to serve the interests of capital.

I am wholly against the things you mentioned, of course, which is why it has been the task of current revolutionaries to plan and organise effectively to minimise these things.

> working within the existing system ("bourgeois democracy") would not be sufficient to bring about lasting change, as the system itself is built to serve the interests of capital.

I think the problem is more that when you do vote in socialism as in Venezuela the system sucks. Then it either gets voted out again or you get a violent dictatorship.