Too many people are confusing the two. Whenever lemmy.ml or its devs do something stupid, people go “Lemmy is getting worse and worse,” or “I’m leaving Lemmy,” or worse, “I’m leaving for Beehaw.”
If you’re using Beehaw, then you’re using Lemmy. Lemmy is the software these instances run on. If you don’t like lemmy.ml, join another instances that have rules that match your philosophy. Some instance hosts authoritarian or fascist shit? Turn to another Lemmy instance. Lemmy.ml is not even the biggest instance. People who just joined and are unfamiliar with the platform will just think the entire Lemmyverse is run by autocratic admins if we don’t get our terminology right.
When it comes to physics Einstein has yet to be proven wrong for just about anything. When it came to politics and human nature. Einstein was not known to be any great judge. And even then. That’s feinting praise. Einstein knew how to throw shade.
Ok, firstly you are not smarter than Einstein.
Secondly. What are you on about? He said this in 1929. Lenin had been dead for 5 years already when he said this. Stalin was leader of the USSR and everything about Lenin and the revolutionary years was perfectly well known. Pretending that Einstein was simply unaware of the events that he actually lived through at the time is ridiculous.
That’s 31 years after Lenin. Having lived through Weimer Germany as a jewish man, watching and applauding the success of the soviet revolution, seeing the failure of the german revolution after the murder of rosa luxembourg, fleeing to the US, and watching the USSR liberate nazi Germany auschwitz and all the camps of the holocaust that he narrowly avoided being part of himself.
He commented on the US in his later life actually, in December 1947 he stated:
“I came to America because of the great, great freedom which I heard existed in this country. I made a mistake in selecting America as a land of freedom, a mistake I cannot repair in the balance of my life.”
The FBI had a 250 page file on einstein, you can view it here: https://vault.fbi.gov/Albert Einstein
On page 14 the report says:
“Not even Stalin himself is affiliated with so many anarcho-communist international groups to promote this “preliminary condition” of world revolution and ultimate anarchy, as Albert Einstein.”
Never claimed to be. Cool strawman though.
You know basic math? That’s cool too. Specifically made point of refference to the legacy of lenin’s authoritarian ideology and it’s common outcomes. Ie social repression and brutality. Not so much the man himself.
If you’re implying that demostrates he wished he’d gone to Russia. That would be a non sequiter and completely unsupported by the qoute. Though I agree with Einsteins assessment there. The US was after all the base model for much of what became Fascism and Nazism that we’re still waiting for a reckoning for even 100 years later.
Hey, you know who wasn’t anarcho communist. Lenin and Stalin! Einstein got it sorted out eventually. Good on him. Double good as I tend towards anarcho communism a bit myself. Posthumous hi-5 with Einstein.
You certainly imply it when you do a 🤓 “that’s a little outside his area of expertiseeeee” response.
Lenin’s authoritarian ideology? Have you read ever actually read any Marx? When Marx said “We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror.” do you think he was talking about sunshines and rainbows? When he said he wanted a dictatorship of the proletariat.
What do you think Marx meant when he said: “their(socialist) ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.” what do you think he meant?
What do you think Marx meant when he said: “there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.”
All you are doing here is demonstrating that you have no idea what Marx ever actually said. You are trying to separate the two as if Lenin somehow poisoned the pure magical utopian ideas of Marx when Lenin was exceptionally faithful to him in every single way. All you are doing here is demonstrating that you have not read Marx and nor have you read Lenin, yet you feel fully equipped to commentate on both as if you’re an authority on the matter. Why?
I’m not implying it. I’m stating it flatly. Einstein supported and defended the USSR his entire life. The fact of the matter however is that it was simply too late in his life by the time he realised America was not going to become what he wished it would, an old man with his family and network all where he had laid roots. He outright stated that he saw America as becoming like nazi germany and did not expect that to stop. He was vocally opposed to the US starting the Cold War, persecution and deportation of communists, and he continued to be completely vocal about his opposition to it right up until he died.
I could even quote the multiple times he flatly defends Stalin but I think that’s a bit too spicey to be quite honest and I’m not particularly sure we should bring Stalin into it when this is not about him, it’s about Lenin.
Lol I never said the FBI goons knew what they were talking about. I don’t think it is correct to label him an ancom, even his “Why Socialism?” essay clearly demonstrates that he wants a state. This isn’t really that surprising though given that he was a scientist who viewed all the major advances of science throughtout the era as state-led.
No, not at all. You even lend credence later when you said he admitted regret emigrating to the US. Einstine is not noted as a great judge of character. Just of physics. It makes no claim about my own skills. Just the dishonesty of your assertions. You’re making an appeal to his authority in physics to justify milataristic dictatorship. You may as well appeal to what ever authority Kim Kardashiuan has.
No, but there’s always more interpritations to most everything that Marx says than the base milataristic Leninist viewpoint. “Terror” is a vagurey that could mean… well almost anything that the bourgeois wouldn’t like. Such as the workers uniting and simply asserting their numbersand solidarity to confront and expell those in power that stood against them.
Marx also spoke of a gradual transition to communism. Over a long period. More of an Evolution than a strictly violent Revolution. Though not shying away from force where neccessary. The problem is with humans and doubly so with the Leninist variety. We lack patience or dedication. And it’s just so much faster/easier to violently force your views onto others than to talk to them and convince them of your views. This is a key point of my divergence with Leninist’s. Forcing themselves not just on to the bourgeois, but the rest of the proletariot. Rather than trying to work with and convince them.
He could have meant a lot of things. There’s more than one type of “force” as well as magnatude of such force. You’re asserting he meant stricly violent military force only. But your quote doesn’t back you up. Karl Marx was a philosopher, and philosophers often use vague and figurative language. Which Leninists always take militarily and litterally. Lenin’s theory grew out of Marxist theory. And not even all of Marxist theory is perfectly sound these days. Vladamir Ulyanov did nothing to fix that either, and only took it to a much more violent and intolerant place.
I’m not some capitalist liberal who think’s ML nations were pure hellscapes. But I will not shy away from vocally calling out their inherant failings. Of which there are many. Ironically, something I wouldn’t be allowed to do in most ML nations. Because of the way they rely on force and the new militairy bourgeois they subject themselves to.
Can I ask how many of Einstein’s books, letters and other associated work you have actually read?
You’re making claims about him but, much like Marx and Lenin, I suspect your actual knowledge about him does not extend beyond extremely basic pop trivia. Despite this, you feel capable of making sweeping claims about the judgement of one of the most remarkable and important people in modern history?
This is not correct. Terror is not being used in the form of “things people don’t like”. Terror is being used in its literal military meaning by Marx here. Marx wanted a violent revolution and recognised that the post-revolutionary state would require the infliction of a terror upon its opposition in order to suppress forces opposed to the revolutionary government and consolidate its power in the face of complete and total global capitalist opposition. A terror means to inflict upon a portion of the population fear as a means of suppressing their political goals.
Marx was an admirer of the French Jacobins and wrote on what is known as the Reign of Terror that they employed during and after the French revolution, while seeing their revolution as an aborted proletarian revolution that failed to achieve the Enlightenment goals that created it. Marx saw liberals as those who had simply replaced the old hierarchy with a new one rather than otherthrown it entirely and installed the people, he saw this as a betrayal of the ideas of the Enlightenment and he saw socialists as the new carriers of those ideas after liberals had firmly dropped them. He contrasted his ideas with the methods of the French revolution frequently:
“Does that mean that in the future the street fight will play no further role? Certainly not. It only means that the conditions since 1848 have become far more unfavorable for civil fights, far more favorable for the military. A future street fight can therefore only be victorious when this unfavorable situation is compensated by other factors. Accordingly, it will occur more seldom in the beginning of a great revolution than in its further progress, and will have to be undertaken with greater forces. These, however, may then well prefer, as in the whole Great French Revolution on September 4 and October 31, 1870, in Paris, the open attack to the passive barricade tactics.” - Marx
Yes but this transition is during socialism, post-revolution, post-terror and clear consolidation of power in the new state. Once the state has resoundingly beaten its enemies and acquired greater resources it then goes into more sophisticated means of preventing counter-revolution. Terror doesn’t last forever.
This is not a divergence with Lenin, this is a divergence with Marx himself. It sounds like you are a pacifist. Marx categorically was not:
“Collisions proceeding from the very conditions of bourgeois society must be fought out to the end, they cannot be conjured out of existence” - Marx
Good job he was explicitly clear what type of force he wanted to use then.
“the governments are opposed to us : we must answer them with all the means that are at our disposal … We must declare to the governments : we will proceed against you where it is possible and by force of arms when it may be necessary” - Marx
Because that is precisely what he said, many many many times.
There are definitely failings to learn from I certainly agree. The ones that are gone wouldn’t be gone had they not failed in one way or another. There is a peculiar past-tense being used in this statement though, “were”, said as if there are none in existence today, this is factually incorrect.
If you can explain why anyone should care about your false appeal to authority. Good luck :)
I think that learning about things is a pre-requisite to having an opinion on them and that more people should simply say “I actually know nothing about that so I don’t hold much opinion”. It shows maturity when people do this, and avoid a lot of wasted time.