I do think Communism was on average a more longtermist movement than democratic revolutions. Maybe the typical revolutionary in all revolutions had similar goals, but Marx and many of his followers had a vision for how history was supposed to play out, and envisioned an intermediate form of society, between the revolution and an eventual classless society.
In contrast, a lot of democratic revolutions were more like “King George bad.” I don’t think the American founding fathers were utopian in the same sense as a lot of Marxists.
You don’t think the Russian revolution was like “Tsar Nicholas bad”?
I mean, “liberty and justice for all” sounds like a pretty strong vision of the future to me.
I guess I’d like to see more evidence that 1) there were significant differences in caring about the future between movements and 2) how these differences contributed to movement failures concretely.
If I had to guess, I’d hypothesize that there’s something else that is the main factor(s), like social dominance orientation of leaders and the presence or absence of group mechanisms to resist that or channel it in less destructive ways.
I do think Communism was on average a more longtermist movement than democratic revolutions. Maybe the typical revolutionary in all revolutions had similar goals, but Marx and many of his followers had a vision for how history was supposed to play out, and envisioned an intermediate form of society, between the revolution and an eventual classless society.
In contrast, a lot of democratic revolutions were more like “King George bad.” I don’t think the American founding fathers were utopian in the same sense as a lot of Marxists.
You don’t think the Russian revolution was like “Tsar Nicholas bad”?
I mean, “liberty and justice for all” sounds like a pretty strong vision of the future to me.
I guess I’d like to see more evidence that 1) there were significant differences in caring about the future between movements and 2) how these differences contributed to movement failures concretely.
If I had to guess, I’d hypothesize that there’s something else that is the main factor(s), like social dominance orientation of leaders and the presence or absence of group mechanisms to resist that or channel it in less destructive ways.