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It is a very old rationalization that the killing under socialist systems is only due to a bad man and not the system. You need to think, not about the politics
by dmfdmf 8y ago
It is a very old rationalization that the killing under socialist systems is only due to a bad man and not the system. You need to think, not about the politics, legal structure or the economics of the social system but the underlying ethical assumptions on which it depends. If society is superior to the individual then sacrificing individuals to social goals is inherent in the system, not an accident of history.
- almostdeadguy 8y agoIt wasn't "one bad man", but it was a product of history. It's not a fucking coincidence that the Gulag system strongly resembled the Tsar's Siberian prison camps. There are pretty obvious reasons for what happened that have nothing to do with "the underlying ethical system", which you still can't elaborate on in a philosophically coherent way. Also the USSR had waged labor, commodity production, bosses, and prison camps so it fails to meet several (basically all?) criteria of socialism that many people would claim except for Marxist Leninists (and even Maoists have a lot of disagreement about this). You're fixated on this goofy "ethical system" explanation, but whenever you're challenged with history or to account for the violence inherent in capitalist systems you balk.
- almostdeadguy 8y agoAnd the convictions of revolutionaries, their interpretation of what was required for a transition to socialism, etc. is extremely salient to a discussion of how socialism plays out in practice (despite the fact that you shrug this off as "politics" and "economics", yet another form of argument that must be beneath your pious bullshit), and there were in fact examples in history to demonstrate this.
- dmfdmf 8y agoI was replying to dragonwriter, not you.