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Maylinnmember 14 posts Location: Östersund, Sweden and London, UK
Posted: Dear agony aunts,
I am a convinced communist who is currently dating a guy who´s in the army. How do I tell my comrades and more importantly, how can I live with myself? Is he really worth it? can he be considering he´s chosen a proffesion which includes killing people? I guess what I really want is for somebody to tell me off and to dump him immidiately. But he says all the right things!
Posted: are you saying that communists = pacifists?
You don't have to look to hard to find violent, murderous communists. Just look at Vietnam, Cuba, N Korea, China
Though calling China communist is as incorrect as calling America a democracy. - people tried, but it just didn't work out.
soldaribusy-tofu! 133 posts Location: montreal: bagel capital
Posted: Perhaps you should look at things another way. Beeing in the army is not about killing people. If his profession was killing people, then he'd be an assassin. But hey, I don't know the guy, I've never met him: maybe he does like to kill people and hasn't enrolled in the army to defend his country or what ever other reason... if you have that many a dilema about dating the guy, or if he is a trully blood-thirsty monster Non-Https Image Link , then yes, dump him.
there is no better way to say I love you than with the gift of a spatula!
Narr(*) (*) .. for the gnor ;) 2,568 posts Location: sitting on the step
Posted: yeah alot of people join the army cos they are normal sent in as peace kepers, its very rare to be in a war situation
good luck though
she who sees from up high smiles
Patrick badger king: *they better hope there's never a jihad on stupidity*
Astarmember 1,591 posts Location: Nova Scotia, Canada.
Posted: Why don't you ask him why he joined the military? Hell a lot of people join purerly because it's a good deal. They pay for your living expenses, food, give you some training (usually it's something you can use outside of the military when your contract is up) And often give you the opportunity to travel.
I could be wrong but when was the last time sweden was involved in anything but peace keeping? It's not like he's joining a military that frequently gets it's self involved in engagements around the world.
Then when he tells you, tell him why you believe in pacifist communism.
Personally it seems wierd that you would use the word communism to associate with non-violence. It's just so hard to picture because non-violence wasn't really written about by marx or engels. Only in a utopian sense. I guess communism has really evolved since then. Is there a page anywheres outlineing the neo-pacifast-communist movement and what it's refinements are to previous communist idealogy?
Maylinnmember 14 posts Location: Östersund, Sweden and London, UK
Posted: well first of all, no communism doesn´t mean pacifism. I belive that we may have to defend a revolution with violence, but we should never initiate one that way. revolution must be initiated because a big majority of people feel it is the right thing(democracy in a way right?). If a revolution is then still stopped by forces of whatever kind (capitalist governemt forces), it may need to be responded to with violence.
When it comes to this guy yes he does have a point to why he´s doing it, he says it´s his aim to make himself unemployed and all that. Still though, he´s chosen a job where he´ll have to kill on orders. That makes me sick. Even if Sweden has no actual war situation and is involved in mainly peace keeping, aren´t there other ways if you want to keep peace? politics? NGOs? The fact that he´s in the Swedish national army means that he will probably be on the oppositt side in case of a refolution (which is nowhere in sight but hypthetically), he would defend the governemt forces that today do their best to make poor Swedes even poorer.
Posted: I didn't mean to sound like I didn't believe communists could be peaceful. I believe that real peace would involve communism. I think that we will only find peace if we find harmony and sustainibility and communism is theoretically much more sustainable than capitalism. Capitalism doesn't even approach sustainibility in any theoretical sense, it is just based on more and more consumption. If the gross national product doesn't grow by something like 3% a year it is economic disaster.
We definitely deserve a system that will allow us to consume less and live more. Capitalism is not the answer so some kind of peaceful communism sounds good to me
I do not believe in armed revolution though. There's a great song by the Anglers called the Real Revolution that says it nicely "You will become the thing you fight against if you only see what you fight for".