Real talk…being born and raised in “communist” China didn’t make me communist in the slightest but getting into the French Revolution has made me a full blown socialist reading actual academic leftist theory
Hi!
I hope this doesn’t sound like a jab- I don’t mean it too. I am honestly curious and nobody has been able to answer this question for me.
What makes you think socialism will work? It’s an idea I’m fascinated by but can’t seem to find enough evidence that it could be successful. I love thinking about it in a fantastical utopian sense but cannot see it being implemented long term. I just want a better understanding.
I do hope you won’t be mad at me. I’ve asked a couple political questions on tumblr out of genuine curiosity and the person I’m asking usually just gets pissed.
With that out of the way- I read your post on a bus, laughed, and everyone stares at me 😂
Here’s the thing, I don’t think of socialism in a “this will definitely work” kind of way. I see it as an IDEAL to thrive toward. There will never be a perfect utopian society because there will always be greedy people out to exploit others and hoard resources, but it’s important to have at least an IDEA of what a utopian society could look like to know how to push back against the greedy and the conservatives. You have to know your destination to figure out which direction you should be going. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get there in one trip, or if you stumble along the way, what matters is that you’re closer to that destination than if you had done nothing and let yourself get dragged in the opposite direction. This is the biggest revelation that studying the French Revolution in depth has given me: just because things got wildly fucked up under a new system implemented in the name of progress doesn’t mean the system itself is unworthy of effort or is inherently unrealistic.
The revolutionaries didn’t know if democracy was going to “work” for France. They went for it anyway, because the alternative was living under the status quo of the ancien regime, and they made the decision to try and break out rather than languish without the rights they wanted. They stumbled in the dark because they had very little idea of what they were doing, and somehow turned into an Empire then a kingdom again then a republic 2.0 then an empire 2.0 then a republic 3.0 then a republic 4.0 and they are now on their 5TH TRY at this republic thing, and it is clearly still riddled with problems for them to have to riot again, but they never would’ve gotten this far if their ancestors hadn’t made that first clumsy attempt in 1792.
Reading all this drama and history made me realize I’d been wrong to give up hope on communism & socialism by association just because it was so disastrous in the 20th century and produced mostly oppressive totalitarian regimes, including my birth country. I’d been led to believe communism itself inevitably spawns hellholes where everyone starves, when there were really so many other factors at play, chiefly America and its militant capitalism doing everything it can to disrupt communist countries, with sanctions, CIA-backed coups, and outright invasions. I saw a parallel in how the rest of Europe went to war against the French First Republic because they were so terrified that the Revolution would spread. The First Republic would not have stumbled nearly so much if it hadn’t had to fend off like SIX OTHER INVADING COUNTRIES and could’ve focused on refining its democratic processes in peace. The pressures of war and the rest of Europe trying to sabotage them was what really led to the Reign of Terror.
After the Coalition defeated Napoleon and restored the French monarchy, I’m sure they thought they proved that democratic republics don’t work and inevitably lead to Jacobins chopping everyone’s heads off, just like how people nowadays think that communism has been proven to not work. Yet the French people remembered the power of direct action, how they once beheaded a king with it. When they became extraordinarily unhappy under Charles X, they overthrew him in 1830. They replaced him with another king, Louis-Phillip, because they were still wary of trying a republic and Louis-Phillip promised to be more liberal, but turns out living under even a liberal-seeming monarch was insufferable!! And so they overthrew Louis-Phillip in 1848 and went for that 2nd republic.
It should be noted that every time a republic was attempted, it inspired progressives in every country around it. Now, we think monarchies are weird and backwards and democratic republics should be the default, “civilized” mode of government. No one automatically associates democracies with terror & guillotines anymore. It wasn’t easy and took a LOT of trial and error, but we got here.
Could we not one day think the same of capitalism vs socialism, or even communism? Right now it seems like capitalism has “won,” but…what has it won, exactly? A handful of billionaires control a majority of wealth. The mass productions that allowed capitalist countries to flex on communist countries about how much better they had it, how many more shiny products they had access to, have proved unsustainable and are killing our planet. Is this really the best we can do? Is it not worth taking another stumble toward something different? What do we have to lose at this point?
“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”
- Ursula K. Le Guin
