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by inglor_cz9 hours ago |
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upvoteby ThrowawayR28 hours ago|
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> "IDK why so many people romanticize pauper riots and try to wish them into existence."

They think they will be they ones leading the riots (the precariat will defer to them because they are "smart" apparently?) instead of they themselves being the ones being swarmed by rioters for visibly being just a little too well off.

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upvoteby looshfarm2 hours ago|
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> During the economic transformation in the former Soviet Bloc, entire industries disappeared, and pitchforks weren't grabbed

Wouldn't it be easy to argue that this is because there was more a social safety net to prevent said starvation and by that point people were extremely cynical about revolutionary ideas in a way that is not at all comparable?

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upvoteby Karrot_Kream8 hours ago|
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It's cathartic to feel that your views are correct but simply suppressed by the establishment. You don't simply have a political opinion, you are ultimately correct, and the true absolution of revolution will make your opinion manifest. My family is from a developing country so the particulars are different, but yes people don't just descend into violent revolution because they lose their jobs. Unemployment is indeed a factor in revolution but is one of many.

It's one of those unfortunate aspects of internet information silos where people repeat this phrase to each other but don't really contextualize their opinions in the greater body of history and political thought.

Additionally, I think a lot of people with this opinion don't realize the vast difference in material standards we have today and what was true in the age of Communist revolution and decolonialization. It's tempting to think of material standards as relative and I think inequality is indeed a destabilizing factor in socities, but minimum material standards are true in so much of the world today that I think a class-conscious revolution is much harder in most of the developed and developing world absent other external political forces (e.g. nationalism, decolonoialism, etc)

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upvoteby geraneum9 hours ago|
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It’s so ironic to use Soviet Union as anecdote here considering what led to its birth.
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upvoteby spidersoverjoye2 hours ago|
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The Soviet Union isn’t exactly an outcome I’d hope for? I like the democracy option better than the pitchfork one
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upvoteby inglor_cz9 hours ago|
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Massive military defeat in WWI which destabilized Russia. If the Whites were better organized, the result could easily have been a very bigoted nationalist dictatorship instead.
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upvoteby UncleOxidant7 hours ago|
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If Kerensky had been successful maybe Russia would have ended up with a Nordic democratic socialism model. Not that he necessarily had the wherewithal to be successful ( Ordered an ill-fated military offensive against Austro-Hungarian forces in June/July 1917 that resulted in heavy losses damaged him politically), but there was a brief shining moment prior to the Germans injecting Lenin back into Russia. The German gambit that sending Lenin into Russia would take Russia out of the war paid off much more handsomely than they could've imagined.
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upvoteby petre8 hours ago|
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It was still a very bigoted nationalist dictatorship. People were sent to the gulag or killed otherwise, for instance through man made famine. Both minorities and so called enemies of the state. The most violent won. That's how one gets leaders like Stalin.
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upvoteby geraneum7 hours ago|
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[dead]
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upvoteby pibaker4 hours ago|
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Judging from your username you were from a country that ended up integrated into the EU. Good for you. But in Russia you can draw a direct line between the economical collapse and drop in living standards of the 90s and the rise of Putin as the big man who will put an end to the disruption.
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