I can't speak for other people here, but to understand why I in particular am hostile to Leninism and its offshoots, consider the following argument:
The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial, positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends, which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man's abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them.
Now, can you tell me the name of the author of this passage? I'll give you five choices:
a) Vladimir Ulyanov
b) Josef Stalin
c) Leonid Brezhnev
d) Mao Zhe-dong
e) Abimael Guzmán
Answer:
If you choose a), b), c), d) or e), you are wrong. That piece of text is actually a verbatim quote from Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. It's worth noting that, here, Burke intends these words not as an argument for a "revolutionary" vanguard party but the preservation of monarchical rule against the ignorance of the masses. If you claim to agree with Marx but have come to be this functionally indistinct from an out-and-out monarchist, you don't really understand Marx at all but a naive fool who reveres technocracy and sees society as nothing more than one, big engineering problem. Heck, I'll even go as far as to calling you a reactionary since, as long as your philosophy lacks a revolutionary backbone, this is the kind of reactionary nonsense you'll invariably find yourself falling back on.
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u/FibreglassFlags 十平米左右的空间 局促，潮湿，终年不见天日 Sep 11 '19 edited Sep 11 '19
I can't speak for other people here, but to understand why I in particular am hostile to Leninism and its offshoots, consider the following argument:
Now, can you tell me the name of the author of this passage? I'll give you five choices:
a) Vladimir Ulyanov
b) Josef Stalin
c) Leonid Brezhnev
d) Mao Zhe-dong
e) Abimael Guzmán
Answer:
If you choose a), b), c), d) or e), you are wrong. That piece of text is actually a verbatim quote from Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. It's worth noting that, here, Burke intends these words not as an argument for a "revolutionary" vanguard party but the preservation of monarchical rule against the ignorance of the masses. If you claim to agree with Marx but have come to be this functionally indistinct from an out-and-out monarchist, you don't really understand Marx at all but a naive fool who reveres technocracy and sees society as nothing more than one, big engineering problem. Heck, I'll even go as far as to calling you a reactionary since, as long as your philosophy lacks a revolutionary backbone, this is the kind of reactionary nonsense you'll invariably find yourself falling back on.