That the greatest period of starvation in Ireland’s modern history, during a period of continent-wide unrest had one rebellion with two deaths might suggest that starvation is not the revolutionary impetus you think it is.

That’s fair. In that case allow me to weaken/correct my position: While starvation isn’t the revolutionary impetus, it’s not nothing and does contribute to revolutions.

The food wasn’t there, because some ~90% of the conscripts sent off to WW1 were peasants, in a system that was already in a very precarious position regarding labor and backwards technology being unable to compensate for shortages of labor. Not only that, but WW1 resulted also in the massive buy-up of horses, also key to peasant life and agricultural production. Even in peacetime it was noted that rural peasantry were malnourished, even by the low standards of the Russian working class, and the situation did not improve during the wartime years.

According to historians, the median level of peasant nutrition appears to have stayed normal.

Source. They still weren’t “having the time of their lives,” to correct my previous assertion, but they weren’t going hungry either.

… land-reformers who split with another, more radical socialist party, and who had only marginal support from the peasantry after 1907? How… revolutionary?

Conservative counterrevolutionaries don’t vote for socialist revolutionary parties, which the Trudoviks were. They split with the SRs over the question of whether they should participate in the Duma so they definitely weren’t merely land-reformers. Also where did you get that they had only marginal support from the peasantry after 1907?

Oh great, increased car payments are just an expression of the human desire not to starve too.

I mean yeah why not? If we assume there’s a person X who’s financially in a bad spot, then the reason person X would have issue with the idea of increased car payments is that the money for the car would have to come from somewhere else. Fundamentally there’s not much difference between a working person getting a pay cut (or facing rising food prices) and a farmer having a bad harvest.

Yes, but if the peasantry, who are objectively in a worse food situation than the urban proletariat, are starving, according to your hunger-based analysis of revolutionary impetus, they should be immensely revolutionary.

Were the peasantry in an objectively worse food situation than the urban proletariat? If you have a something supporting that claim please link it.

Yet history shows, time and time again, that this is not the case - and Marx, living during the Revolutions of '48 you claim were driven by hunger, himself noted the lack of revolutionary sentiment in the peasantry.

Peasants didn’t really revolt in the same way urban workers did, and urban workers were absolutely more revolutionary (though in some places the gap shrank with time), but peasant uprisings did happen during in 1848-1849.

Peasant revolts in 1848–1849 involved more participants than the national revolutions of the period. Most importantly, they were successful in bringing the final abolition of serfdom or its remnants across the German Confederation, the Austrian Empire and Prussia.

Source.

Also on the 1848 revolutions as a whole,

Some historians emphasise the serious crop failures, particularly those of 1846, that produced hardship among peasants and the working urban poor.

There’s a reason I said “in part”. I know that the hungry forties were only one contributing cause of the revolutions of 1848, and I don’t think you’ll find a reputable historian that considers them irrelevant.

That’d be tantamount to seceding, so legally no but practically yes if they want to secede.

Brilliant, I suppose that’s why famines are so often accompanied by redistribution of wealth, once the rich have been killed so the poor can eat. Inequality plummets after famines, what with all of those dead elites. /s

Here’s Wikipedia on the Irish potato famine:

The period of the potato blight in Ireland from 1845 to 1851 was full of political confrontation.[84] A more radical Young Ireland group seceded from the Repeal movement in July 1846, and attempted an armed rebellion in 1848. It was unsuccessful.

Peasant uprisings almost always (or just always???) end in failure, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Furthermore, the strata most likely to experience anything resembling actual starvation was the peasantry, which was largely indifferent to the prospect of revolution, and would end up as a primary support base for the counterrevolutionaries in the years to come.

What? No. The Russian peasantry was having the time of their lives during WWI (well, the ones not conscripted into the war anyway). It’s a long story, but because of inflation, strained supply chains and government failures meant that while the food was there, it just wasn’t getting to the cities. Also do note that the Russian peasantry, while not as revolutionary as the urban proletariat, were absolutely not indifferent to the prospect of revolution. These were the people breaking into, ransacking and burning down their local nobles’ manors. They were also electing these guys.

Insofar as they caused economic distress by increasing food prices. Insofar as actual starvation is concerned, no.

Those are literally the same thing. Economic distress is just an expression of the human desire not to starve.

There’s a reason why the Communist Manifesto, itself written during the Revolutions of 48, mentions the lack of revolutionary potential of the peasantry, who would’ve been the most food insecure of the classes.

I don’t see why peasants would be any more affected by lack of food than the urban proletariat, but that could be just my ignorance. Also Marx’s reasons for making that conclusion were based on peasants’ relationship with private property and religion, and not about how they’re somehow more at leace with rhe prospect of starving to death.

Desperation drives one to desperate acts - with desperate goals. A starving man doesn’t overthrow a government, a starving man steals bread.

Yes, and a million starving men will kill the people keeping all the bread so they can eat. The Russian revolution, for example, was directly caused by the lack of food in Russian cities, and the revolutions of 1848-1849 were in part caused by the hungry forties.

To be fair the liberation of India wasn’t accomplished through violence, at least not mainly. It wasn’t accomplished through protest either, mind you; Ghandi’s approach was simply not supporting the British occupation (which needed Indian collaboration to function) and letting it collapse under its own weight.

Does it require infinite growth adjusted for inflation? Because as long as you have a state printing money there will be inflation and if your profits don’t keep up with it that means they’re decreasing, not just constant.

Amusingly enough, there’s more. Because of Trump’s ineptitude at negotiation Mexico got him to police gun flow from America to them, and it seems his sheer presence will spare Canada of a conservative majority in the next election.

I mean I’m not American so I can’t do much, but that aside you don’t need to go to the capital. You can raise some hell right in your backyard by—among other things—refusing to work. Organize protests not against Trump, but against your senators, representatives and (if applicable) state officials for not resisting Trump’s rampage more.

Finally I want to note that I’m not making a moral judgement here (it wouldn’t make sense to do that from the sidelines, as you said) but rather a statement. I’m not sure most Americans fully understand the implications here, but unless Americans en masse choose to change course y’all are on a one-way trip to fascismland. What responsibility you want to assign to whom here is up to you.

your question is “does literally every single protest ever achieve the exact aims it set out to?”

Your claim that protesting works period would logically lead to that conclusion. If not all protests work then there must be effective and non-effective ways of protesting, and just the “will of the people” can’t be enough. In hindsight the Iraq war would’ve been a better example here.

Your state officials are already on your side, but your senators and representatives are likely following the DNC’s ineffectual leadership and—among other things—confirming Trump’s nominations for office. If so that’s what you should be protesting. Make sure your state officials are also resisting Trump policies that affect the state (like California should have been doing when Trump started messing with their water reservoirs).

Our leaders are in a proverbial ivory tower and we’ve been stripped of any ability to effect change through anything but a national strike, which has not been successfully organized, largely due to the scale required.

Then organize one. Unionize, and if already unionized have your union leaders cooperate with other unions to prepare so when the time comes they can quickly organize a general strike.

If your claim is true, where does that leave these guys?

Give me an example.

Historically successful protest campaigns need people in percents of the population to have an effect. Tens of thousands dividend by 350 million is… uh… not that.

Real, mass protests can and do move national policy as you said. However, 50501 isn’t that. Look up the civil rights movement or the late 19th early 20th century labor movement for what you need to do to make politicians listen to you. You want millions of people (ideally 3.5%+ of the population) protesting for extended periods of time (the 1 part of 50501 is on its own a deal breaker) if you want any hope of getting anything done. Compare this to 50501 and tell me the latter isn’t simply not enough.

Okay I’ll be blunt here: This is nothing and if this is Americans’ idea of resisting then y’all are never going to beat fascism. Historians will look at this period and say there was very little popular resistance to Trump’s regime.

I think you’re misunderstanding this particular situation. Hochul didn’t ignore Trump’s order; he’s going to contest it in court as outside Trump’s legal authority as president.

The line could easily be drawn at “not calling for genocide” I think that’s fairly safe.

The problem is that you don’t get to draw the line; you only get to erase the previous line and mark the general vicinity where the next line might be.

So I don’t see how banning Nazis speech will make things worse.

There’s always room for things to get worse. Hate speech laws in particular tend to be pretty draconian so they’ve got a lot more room for things to go wrong than anti-terror laws (which, as you said, are already abused).

How can you claim to support naziism without claiming support for the Holocaust?

Obviously you can’t, but allowing the judicial system to make this kind of conclusion on behalf of the people is not a good idea. You can get a judge that will say anti-Zionism is the same as anti-Semitism and therefore hate speech. This is not a slippery slope argument; Germany for example literally does this.

And about Trump, he will do what he wants regardless.

I mean yes and no. He’s Trump, but he’s still bound by the law and can’t just arrest everyone he doesn’t like. Therefore giving him a way to arrest innocent people for “hate speech” is not a good idea. And again we’re not talking hypotheticals in the far future; the political will to do this sort of thing is there and only bound by Americans’ first amendment rights.

I mean they can be arrested if they explicitly call for that. If you want to expand the range of speech considered hate speech so it includes Nazi demonstrations then, well… Would you trust Trump with that kind of power?

Alternatively, it’s to be sexually attracted to the pursuit of happiness.