Welcome again to everybody, and happy anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of Vietnam . Make yourself at home and pay your respects to Ho Chi Minh. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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i would think the way the communists handled emperor puyi is a great example of what you’re looking for. it’s not always feasible to do that, as with tzar nicholas. at the end of the day i think the difference between justice and revenge is that justice centers the best interests of the oppressed, and revenge centers punishment of the oppressor. that’s why i would consider both the treatment of puyi and nicholas “just”. whatever was done, it was done to further the interests of the proletariat and the peasantry, not to enact some secular-calvinist notion of karmic retribution.
Thanks for weighing in, that makes sense to me. And I agree with you and have had similar thoughts about those events in the past, that both are valid responses to conditions because the conditions were not the same, essentially. In the moment, the revolution had to determine what would be most effective for gaining and securing power, and that can produce different outcomes for handling the oppressor, depending. So yeah, well said: focus on what is in the best interests of the oppressed.