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This is OT but I wanted to ask before: what does the "Jacobin" in Jacobin Mag refer to? Presumably not the more genocidal fraction of the French Revolution whic

by blfr 11y ago

This is OT but I wanted to ask before: what does the "Jacobin" in Jacobin Mag refer to? Presumably not the more genocidal fraction of the French Revolution which was my first guess?

jnmandal 11y ago
It's become more of a broad term in politics that was at first mostly critical (implying much the same of what you're saying here) before being later adopted by the people who see themselves as _very_ left. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(politics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(politics)
dcre 11y ago
For more info, here is a great writeup by Alex Payne on why he made a large donation to Jacobin and joined their board: https://al3x.net/2015/03/03/jacobin.html https://al3x.net/2015/03/03/jacobin.html > Democratic socialist politics are my politics. I’m a socialist because I want to live in a just society. More than that, I want to live in a survivable society. The form of capitalism we live under does not present a viable future ecologically, economically, or socially. It is a system designed for the creation and preservation of capital, not human life. I’m a socialist because I believe that the wealth of society can best be harnessed through cooperation, not competition.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  And moreover, people who support capitalism don't get an automatic right to label socialists as "murderous" or "genocidal" simply because our revolutions kill people up front. Sure, blame us for the Holodomor and the "Great Leap Forward" (and other similar artificial famines, disease outbreaks, etc caused by bad state-socialist policy), but don't act like your hands are clean when you support a system that kills, last I remember, 49,000 people each year simply by artificially refusing to treat their diseases, and kills further millions in its endless-yet-pointless foreign wars. I fully support having a genuine contest of ideologies to see who can kill fewer people and save more lives, with greater health and happiness! But that means we have to admit, in the first place, that capitalism kills, which is more honesty than we get out of most people in Western societies today.
  - lliamander 11y ago
    > And moreover, people who support capitalism don't get an automatic right to label socialists as "murderous" or "genocidal" simply because our revolutions kill people up front. Um... that is exactly why we call them murderous. Because they killed people. A lot of them. In cold blood.
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      As many as capitalism does?
      - jeffbax 11y ago
        You mean, when capitalism isn't bringing unprecedented amounts of people out of abject poverty? (eg, cutting world poverty in half in the past 20 years) Socialism is great, until you read a history book or look at its actual implementation. And no, don't bring up northern EU states that actually depend on quite free market capitalism to finance it (as well as unrealistic monocultures that are unrealistic for the USA, and lead to morally reprehensible immigration restrictions to keep the systems from being overwhelmed)
tvanantwerp 11y ago
Having read a few pieces in Jacobin from time to time, your first guess might not be too far off.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
No, it actually means exactly what you think it means: the kind of left-wing revolutionary who fully intends to see some bourgeois heads rolling. As a subscriber, I do think most of us would settle for the abolition of bourgeois class-status rather than bourgeois lives, when it comes to it.
- randallsquared 11y ago
  How comforting.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    If it was written somewhere that people's stated political ideologies are required to be comforting to others, I could have sued Alan Greenspan and Paul Ryan for millions.
    - lliamander 11y ago
      I think what he finds discomforting is that solutions which avoid killing some group of people (in this case, the "bourgeois") is somehow "settling".
      - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
        Ah, well that's just bad phrasing. It's not "settling" because we'd prefer to kill more people, it's "settling" because we want to avoid counter-revolutions later.
venomsnake 11y ago
They were not genocidal. Just classist.
- dcre 11y ago
  You might find this interesting, or more likely infuriating: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/socialism-marxism-democracy-inequality-erik-olin-wright/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/socialism-marxism-democra...

by blfr 11y ago

This is OT but I wanted to ask before: what does the "Jacobin" in Jacobin Mag refer to? Presumably not the more genocidal fraction of the French Revolution which was my first guess?

jnmandal 11y ago

It's become more of a broad term in politics that was at first mostly critical (implying much the same of what you're saying here) before being later adopted by the people who see themselves as _very_ left. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(politics) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacobin_(politics)

dcre 11y ago

For more info, here is a great writeup by Alex Payne on why he made a large donation to Jacobin and joined their board: https://al3x.net/2015/03/03/jacobin.html https://al3x.net/2015/03/03/jacobin.html > Democratic socialist politics are my politics. I’m a socialist because I want to live in a just society. More than that, I want to live in a survivable society. The form of capitalism we live under does not present a viable future ecologically, economically, or socially. It is a system designed for the creation and preservation of capital, not human life. I’m a socialist because I believe that the wealth of society can best be harnessed through cooperation, not competition.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago
And moreover, people who support capitalism don't get an automatic right to label socialists as "murderous" or "genocidal" simply because our revolutions kill people up front. Sure, blame us for the Holodomor and the "Great Leap Forward" (and other similar artificial famines, disease outbreaks, etc caused by bad state-socialist policy), but don't act like your hands are clean when you support a system that kills, last I remember, 49,000 people each year simply by artificially refusing to treat their diseases, and kills further millions in its endless-yet-pointless foreign wars. I fully support having a genuine contest of ideologies to see who can kill fewer people and save more lives, with greater health and happiness! But that means we have to admit, in the first place, that capitalism kills, which is more honesty than we get out of most people in Western societies today.
- lliamander 11y ago
  > And moreover, people who support capitalism don't get an automatic right to label socialists as "murderous" or "genocidal" simply because our revolutions kill people up front. Um... that is exactly why we call them murderous. Because they killed people. A lot of them. In cold blood.
  - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
    As many as capitalism does?
    - jeffbax 11y ago
      You mean, when capitalism isn't bringing unprecedented amounts of people out of abject poverty? (eg, cutting world poverty in half in the past 20 years) Socialism is great, until you read a history book or look at its actual implementation. And no, don't bring up northern EU states that actually depend on quite free market capitalism to finance it (as well as unrealistic monocultures that are unrealistic for the USA, and lead to morally reprehensible immigration restrictions to keep the systems from being overwhelmed)

tvanantwerp 11y ago

Having read a few pieces in Jacobin from time to time, your first guess might not be too far off.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

No, it actually means exactly what you think it means: the kind of left-wing revolutionary who fully intends to see some bourgeois heads rolling. As a subscriber, I do think most of us would settle for the abolition of bourgeois class-status rather than bourgeois lives, when it comes to it.

randallsquared 11y ago
How comforting.
- eli_gottlieb 11y ago
  If it was written somewhere that people's stated political ideologies are required to be comforting to others, I could have sued Alan Greenspan and Paul Ryan for millions.
  - lliamander 11y ago
    I think what he finds discomforting is that solutions which avoid killing some group of people (in this case, the "bourgeois") is somehow "settling".
    - eli_gottlieb 11y ago
      Ah, well that's just bad phrasing. It's not "settling" because we'd prefer to kill more people, it's "settling" because we want to avoid counter-revolutions later.

venomsnake 11y ago

They were not genocidal. Just classist.

dcre 11y ago
You might find this interesting, or more likely infuriating: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/socialism-marxism-democracy-inequality-erik-olin-wright/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/socialism-marxism-democra...