this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
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United States | News & Politics
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Genuine questions, no malice here:
Do you think the solution to what is described in the article is a solution proposed more than a century ago still valid for today's illnesses? How people fell in 1910s, same as today?
Knowing how the world ended in two mayor wards and one hundred million violently killed, wouldn't a solution less incendiary be better? Our weapons today are infinitely more powerful than in 1910s and truly, I see politicians far more willing to use them than in 1960s.
I don't think human society has fundamentally changed in a century. I think the problems the Bolsheviks dealt with stem from the exact same material relations as the problems we face today. Nobody has proposed a better solution that's been demonstrated to work in the past century that I'm aware of.
Both world wars wore a direct result of capitalism, and had the Europeans not shat the bed after the Soviet revolution, we may have moved past the capitalist stage of development by now. The longer capitalist regimes are allowed to continue to exist the more likely the scenario you fear will come to pass.
Thanks, I have no read anything from those times so I don't know nor I want to speculate. Now, my fear from what I have observed in the last decade is real. However, living in Asia I did not have that feeling... are they blind there or is just that in the West that we sense the worse is coming.
I really can't recommend reading The State and Revolution enough. It is the most lucid explanation of what's currently happening and why. It's a short read and you're going to be surprised how relevant it feels to the current moment. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/
The dynamics in Asia are indeed different, and China acts as a stabilizing force there. The economies there are hedging against the west, and they're increasingly focusing on trade amongst themselves and the developing world.
Just got that in Audiobook... I have to confess no much into reading non-fictional staff from that long ago but I recognize it may be relevant. I have this and Tepora's The Finnish Civil War for this weekend.
I found this particular book was incredibly eye opening because it clarified a lot of the mechanics of how our system works for me. What I found most shocking was how it's pretty clear exact same types of debates that we're having today regarding reforming the system were happening a century ago. And that goes back to your original question of how relevant this stuff is. If we're still having these same discussions about the same kinds of problems, then we have to inform ourselves on the history of these debates. There is a huge wealth of knowledge and experince that's been built up that's being ignored today.
Completely agree... yet with a saturation of information available today, it is so hard to dedicate time to events a century old to apply the learning to today's world. Our filters are saturated and clogged and unable to process data efficiently anylonger.
I find it helps to develop a mindset of thinking in terms of dynamic systems where you can identify forces acting upon the system and try to understand likely ways the system will evolve as whole. For example, if we're dealing with capitalist relations be it today or a century ago, the forces within the system form an invariant. We have people who own substantial capital and those who do not. Their interests form a contradiction because they are fundamentally opposed to each other. If I'm a business owner then my desire is to minimize my costs an maximize profits, while if I'm a worker selling my labour I want to maximize my salary and benefits. Once we frame the problem in these terms we can try to think about potential resolutions to these contradictions, and that's where historical record becomes informative. If we can identify similar situations in the past, they can inform us on what we can expect going forward.
I have an introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list if you want a more structured course, and you find State and Revolution to be too advanced for starting out! But S&R is a banger text, it's included in the course.
Thanks Cowbee! The audiobooks format is welcome too.
No problem, enjoy! Feel free to ask questions or make suggestions!