Free Talk: Empathy Under Attack vs New Communist Vision (Berkeley)

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Discussion of Bob Avakian’s article:

Fascist Cruelty and Attack on Empathy vs the New Communist View of Empathy

July 24th Friday 7pm

Revolution Books 2444 Durant Avenue Berkeley

It is not just the cruelty of Trump MAGA Fascism, they are attacking even the idea of empathy, as Bob Avakian points to in this article,  The Fascist Attack on Empathy:

As a significant “philosophical rationalization” for this cruelty, a number of fascist Trump supporters, including Elon Musk as well as Charlie Kirk, have directly attacked the whole concept of empathy: the character (or ability) to understand and identify with the feelings of another. Such empathy, they insist, will lead to a situation where people who (according to these fascists) have no legitimate place in this country—people who represent “alien” cultures and ways of life—will be sympathized with and allowed to remain in this country and destroy the white, masculine, Christian way of life and “superior Western civilization” on which this country must be based.

The new communist view of empathy is fundamentally different:

The ability to empathize—to understand and identify with the feelings of another—is a capability that human beings develop at a relatively early age, and is one of the defining qualities of human beings as a species. In an overall sense, empathy is a quality, a positive moral good, that should be encouraged in any decent society—and in any society where empathy is not encouraged, but is vilified and attacked, this will lead to a situation where people’s basic humanity will be suppressed where it is not fully corrupted.

At the same time, empathy cannot be separated from, and posed in opposition to, fundamental social relations. In a system based on slavery, for example, one cannot empathize with both the slave-owners and the slaves, for the basic reason that the conditions and the basic interests of the two are in fundamental and antagonistic conflict. It is possible, even important, to understand scientifically the outlook and interests of the slave-owners, in order to most effectively struggle to eliminate the system of slavery; but it is not possible to identify and sympathize with slave-owners without failing, in reality, to empathize with—without actually betraying—those who are enslaved.

The same is true with regard to the relations between the exploiters and exploited, oppressors and oppressed, in all systems based on exploitation and oppression, including capitalism. Only when the historic objective of the communist revolution has been achieved—the abolition and uprooting of all relations of exploitation and oppression, everywhere—can empathy be applied with regard to people generally.

Read the whole article here.

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