There are no “effects on the world” from this and if there will be then those effects will be purely negative such as more copycat killers attacking random targets. A bad person is just dead, its results are purely therapeutic.
No, the question boils down to the effect it has on consciousness. How many people broke free from the defeatist disbelief in the possibility of upending the rule of those who may have seemed untouchable to them less than a week ago is hard to fathom.
Not to mention that it was yet another instance of a large scale masks-off event for the exploiter class, with both Democrats and Trump as well as their media lackeys proving once again that they are really just one single party of capital.
Of course however, this does not mean that it also poses a threat of some people falling into the erroneous conviction that risks resulting in anything more than repression by the authorities, that the problem is personal and not structural.
The number of people who “broke free from the defeatist disbelief in the possibility of upending the rule” don’t have any impact on the system that creates and restrains billionaires. Even if more people die in the streets nothing, aside from more death, changes.
Real change has to come from ballots. From pen on paper. Or else, if you utilizr violence to the extent of permanent systemic change, you will absolutely have a worse system at the end of it. A system where the strong kill the weak and take what they want. A system where the faction with the most absolute and unquestioned loyalty wins fights and slaughters their intellectual betters.
Voting is over. I’m not kidding when I say that. Trump is a fascist, and until he dies, there will be no more fair elections. We won’t be able to restrain the rich with the state, as there will be no more rule of law. It’s only the rule of one man now.
Even if you have total faith in liberal democracy being the best system, you need to understand that we lost it. The liberal experiment came to an end at year 248. The system is toast. The Leviathan of the state will no longer listen to us, and the social contract has been irreparably burned by the fires of fascism.
We’d need a new contract to get that system back. Trump will cause a level of change to our government that we haven’t seen since FDR.
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A system where the faction with the most absolute and unquestioned loyalty wins fights and slaughters their intellectual betters.
This reeks of a bourgeois fear of the masses rising up to demand what’s rightfully theirs, of thinly veiled elitism and misunderstanding of the basics of class relations. No, it’s not blue vs white collars but people living off others’ toil and the toilers.
Who are these “intellectual betters”? Capitalist apologists? Corporate technocrats? The same people whose “brilliance” built a world teetering on ecological collapse? Spare us the melodrama. Revolutions don’t thrive on blind loyalty; they’re built on solidarity and the shared understanding that the status quo is unsustainable.
Your argument boils down to a defense of complacency: ballots over barricades, submission over struggle. You seem more afraid of the risks of change than the certainty of suffering under capitalism. But history teaches us that systemic change demands courage—not the cowardice of hoping billionaires and their henchmen will play nice. Keep clutching those ballots; the rest of us will be busy building a world where they aren’t needed to decide who gets to live with dignity.
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Your comment reads like a manifesto for maintaining the status quo dressed up as pragmatic wisdom. It’s almost charming, in the same way, an infomercial about a “miracle” weight-loss pill is charming, assuming the audience hasn’t read the fine print. But let’s get to the real business of dismantling this labyrinth of myths you’ve built.
The number of people who ‘broke free from the defeatist disbelief in the possibility of upending the rule’ don’t have any impact on the system that creates and restrains billionaires.
Oh, so now we’re pretending that mass shifts in consciousness are irrelevant? History begs to differ. The abolition of feudalism, the rise of unions, civil rights movements—all were powered by collective awakenings. The Paris Commune was ridiculed as a blip, yet it shaped proletarian strategies worldwide. The suffragettes, who were once dismissed as a hysterical sideshow, rewrote the political landscape. Sure, individual enlightenment alone won’t topple billionaires—but dismissing the transformative potential of collective action? That’s some industrial-strength cynicism masquerading as “realism.”
Real change has to come from ballots. From pen on paper.
This Hallmark sentiment belongs on a motivational poster, not in a serious discussion about systemic change. Who controls the ballots? Capitalist elites, through gerrymandering, corporate media, voter suppression, and lobbying. Let’s talk specifics: Tsipras in Greece was democratically elected to resist austerity. What did ballots deliver? Betrayal. Ask the Greeks who were prevented by the banksters from withdrawing more than 50€ a day. Bernie Sanders inspired millions, only to capitulate to the Democrat machine with imperialist war criminals at the helm, because Democrats were never a party that served the working people. They had so many chances to e.g. codify abortion when they were in power, before Roe v Wade got struck down. Meanwhile, Corbyn faced a relentless smear campaign and sabotage from within Labour and now virtually all of the Labour left is purged and Sir Starmer happily approves more and more money being wasted on warfare while denying the possibility of renationalizing the water companies which have turned British rivers into one of the most polluted in Europe, because his narrow reformist mindset rejects the possibility of expropriation without compensation, even if it’s something so indusputably belonging to all, a common (outside_ the WEF and other ultra-rich psychopath meetings, of course).
The conclusion? Ballots are a tool wielded by the ruling class to manage dissent, not overthrow it.
If you utilize violence to the extent of permanent systemic change, you will absolutely have a worse system at the end of it.
Ohh the old pearl-clutching “violence begets chaos” trope. Conveniently ignores the systemic violence baked into capitalism: poverty, imperialist wars, environmental destruction, police brutality.
Over 100 million people displaced in the last year.
56 wars raging worldwide, the highest figure since WWII.
Nuclear warfare back in business after three decades.
Approx. 5-20 million people dying annually due to preventable causes
Revolutionary violence isn’t arbitrary carnage; it’s the oppressed defending themselves against the daily brutality of the ruling class. In fact, it is out of the fatigue with the incessant brutality, injustice and deprivation of the existing order that revolutions are born. Look at the revolutionary wave that followed after the Great Slaughter of WWI.
Capitalist states routinely murder and displace millions to maintain power. Revolutionary violence seeks to end that barbarism, not perpetuate it.
Take again the Russian Revolution—initially a relatively bloodless overthrow. More people got trampled over when the storming of Winter Palace was being reenacted 10 years later for a movie than during the actual event. The ensuing violence was primarily defensive, against counter-revolutionaries and imperialist invaders. Without the Red Army, the October Revolution would’ve been a footnote. If you don’t believe me, read Ten days that shook the world by John Reed.
Capitalism’s birth was hardly a bloodless affair—whether through the American or French Revolutions, Wars of the Three Kingdoms, La Conquista, Opium Wars, colonialism in Africa, India or Indonesia, it was drenched in violence. Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and freedom of the press. The civil war resulted in the death of roughly 2.5% of the U.S. population. During the Russian Civil War, about 0.7% of the population died, a large portion of which can be attributed to the White Terror. Yet, the Bolsheviks, despite the brutal conditions, attempted to minimize violence. They first sought to rely on agitation among intervention forces, and even amid famine, Lenin organized the largest international aid operation of its time, importing vast amounts of grain into the USSR between 1918 and 1921—much of it sabotaged by the Whites, Esery or kulaks. The mutinies within the foreign troops and the strikes and blockades organized in solidarity by French or British workers also contributed to the withdrawal of many of the Allied troops. Still, you wouldn’t think of questioning the legitimacy of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions or the U.S. Civil War, would you? And in fact, if not then rightly so. Beacause freedom is the recognition of necessity. They played their progressive role at their time, along with capitalism. But that potential is long gone and now capitalism is holding human potential back.
