I read through your thread with Cowbee that chloroken had listed and am still confused what you mean by a moderately conservative communist. Can you elaborate why you choose to describe a communist, essentially a person who wants to bring change, as conservative, which means to oppose change?
The thread already highlights this, but the target of the change dictates the label.
You are assuming capitalism is the steady baseline and communism is the disruption. But in reality, global capital is the true revolutionary force. It constantly tears apart the planet, destroying ecosystems just to keep expanding. It is insanely radical.
So if capital is the radical disruption, then what does it mean to be a conservative? ‘oppose change’ certainly doesn’t cover it or much of anything at all. It means you want to conserve the basic conditions of life against this chaos. I am a communist because it takes a radical break to stop capital, but I am a conservative because the whole point is to defend the physical world from its destructive progress. Communist means, conservative ends.
I feel like your true definition of ‘change’ means ‘movement toward liberation’ if you could only be more specific. If a train is heading towards a cliff, hitting the brakes is conservative in the literal sense, but it is also the only sane and radical thing to do. You need a revolutionary tool (communism) to apply the brakes, but the goal is ultimately conservative (keeping the train from crashing).
Conservative doesn’t mean what you think it does. Conservative means not changing the state at all. Capitalism is the status quo. Communism is something new, something untried, that resolves to break the status quo. Conserving the environment means to stop whatever actions we are doing to change it. Usually people mean stopping the destructive actions towards the environment, so it has eventually come to mean saving the environment/biodiversity, etc. That still doesn’t change the meaning of the word conservative, which means upholding the prevailing state of things.
If a train is heading towards a cliff, hitting the brakes is conservative in the literal sense
Using your example, letting the train run is conservative, and hitting the brakes to stop it (changing the state) is radical.
Your mistake is treating capitalism as a static “status quo.” It isn’t. Capitalism is a dynamic process of constant, disruptive revolution. It actively destroys the ecological status quo every single day. So if “conservative” means upholding the prevailing state of things, then defending the physical world against capitalist expansion is conservative. You have to radically change the economy just to conserve the environment.
The train analogy only proves my point. If a train is accelerating toward a cliff, letting it run preserves the engine’s current operation, but it radically destroys the train. Hitting the brakes disrupts the engine’s operation in order to conserve the train. I want to disrupt the capitalist engine to conserve the physical world. Communist means, conservative ends.
I think you’re conflating ecological conservation and political conservatism. This seems like an argument that wouldn’t exist in a language that created a meaningful distinction between the two.
An individual that is protecting the rights of capital to cause rapid ecological damage, is doing so by seeking to preserve the power of private capital.
A leftist seeking to abolish the power of capital to conserve the environment is the radical in that case.
Communism through conservatism as I think you are describing it isn’t wrong, but it is at the very least confusing due to the clashing definitions of radical, conservative, and the targets of both changes and preservation of the structures.
I read through your thread with Cowbee that chloroken had listed and am still confused what you mean by a moderately conservative communist. Can you elaborate why you choose to describe a communist, essentially a person who wants to bring change, as conservative, which means to oppose change?
The thread already highlights this, but the target of the change dictates the label.
You are assuming capitalism is the steady baseline and communism is the disruption. But in reality, global capital is the true revolutionary force. It constantly tears apart the planet, destroying ecosystems just to keep expanding. It is insanely radical.
So if capital is the radical disruption, then what does it mean to be a conservative? ‘oppose change’ certainly doesn’t cover it or much of anything at all. It means you want to conserve the basic conditions of life against this chaos. I am a communist because it takes a radical break to stop capital, but I am a conservative because the whole point is to defend the physical world from its destructive progress. Communist means, conservative ends.
I feel like your true definition of ‘change’ means ‘movement toward liberation’ if you could only be more specific. If a train is heading towards a cliff, hitting the brakes is conservative in the literal sense, but it is also the only sane and radical thing to do. You need a revolutionary tool (communism) to apply the brakes, but the goal is ultimately conservative (keeping the train from crashing).
Conservative doesn’t mean what you think it does. Conservative means not changing the state at all. Capitalism is the status quo. Communism is something new, something untried, that resolves to break the status quo. Conserving the environment means to stop whatever actions we are doing to change it. Usually people mean stopping the destructive actions towards the environment, so it has eventually come to mean saving the environment/biodiversity, etc. That still doesn’t change the meaning of the word conservative, which means upholding the prevailing state of things.
Using your example, letting the train run is conservative, and hitting the brakes to stop it (changing the state) is radical.
Your mistake is treating capitalism as a static “status quo.” It isn’t. Capitalism is a dynamic process of constant, disruptive revolution. It actively destroys the ecological status quo every single day. So if “conservative” means upholding the prevailing state of things, then defending the physical world against capitalist expansion is conservative. You have to radically change the economy just to conserve the environment.
The train analogy only proves my point. If a train is accelerating toward a cliff, letting it run preserves the engine’s current operation, but it radically destroys the train. Hitting the brakes disrupts the engine’s operation in order to conserve the train. I want to disrupt the capitalist engine to conserve the physical world. Communist means, conservative ends.
I think you’re conflating ecological conservation and political conservatism. This seems like an argument that wouldn’t exist in a language that created a meaningful distinction between the two.
An individual that is protecting the rights of capital to cause rapid ecological damage, is doing so by seeking to preserve the power of private capital.
A leftist seeking to abolish the power of capital to conserve the environment is the radical in that case.
Communism through conservatism as I think you are describing it isn’t wrong, but it is at the very least confusing due to the clashing definitions of radical, conservative, and the targets of both changes and preservation of the structures.
Once again for the sake of clarity
Ecologic conservation, cultural/sociatal conservation ≠ economic conservatism.
Sticking the terms together is kinda just confusing
You’re playing on semantics