Ideology

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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 07, 2023 3:21 pm

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The New Left believes the people are fundamentally reactionary. Marxists who want to win reject this idea.

BY RAINER SHEA
JUNE 5, 2023

In our task of defeating the state, we must ask: what’s the issue that’s most relevant to the majority of the population within our society? What’s the concern that can unite the most people around the cause of working class solidarity? With Biden’s Ukraine proxy war, which has driven over 60% of Americans into living paycheck to paycheck, it’s become more apparent than ever that this issue is class exploitation. Therefore to win the people, which is indispensable for defeating the state, class exploitation is what we need to emphasize. That along with U.S. hegemony, which is the thing that’s incentivized our government to start an economy-destroying war for the sake of defending American power. The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, the war machine, and the Federal Reserve’s scheme to drive down living standards so that employers can be given more leverage are among the main points of outrage which we can put forth.

They’re the things that can bring the majority to class consciousness. Using them as ways to create mass appeal for communism doesn’t mean we have to disregard the colonial contradiction. In fact, when we do our job as theoreticians properly, we’re able to illustrate the link between modern American colonialism and these class/imperialism related issues. Because under our conditions, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie can’t be defeated without in the process bringing maximally expanded tribal sovereignty. All of these issues are connected. The usefulness of making these majoritarian issues into rallying points is that it’s what will let us win. Which is what will let us rectify the injustices perpetrated upon the First Nations peoples, who are only a minority because of genocide.

The idea the New Left centers around is that if we were to incorporate the majoritarian issues into our practice, even simply as pieces of rhetoric that are essential for building a broad base of support, we would be betraying the cause of social justice. Which is absolutely untrue, the two are capable of being reconciled. Yet the New Left, in the form of its modern adherents, continues to assert there’s a contradiction between the two that can’t be rectified.

The more attention you pay to these types of ideas, the ones that seek to discredit dialectically informed practice from a “radical” angle, the more you see the essential notion these radical liberals seek to convey: that the people are fundamentally reactionary. We can see this in the emergence of two major recent arguments within left discourse: one, that MAGA has proven the white workers are essentially synonymous with the U.S. government; and two, that this means the pro-Russia stance in the new cold war is a reactionary stance.

The way the New Left’s modern representatives argue MAGA has revealed the white working class’ incompatibility with other other workers is predicated in the same unscientific reasoning behind Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment. The intent behind that comment was not anti-racism but contempt for working class people, because Clinton and the other liberals are most inclined to judge those they perceive to be lower class. The irony is that the premise their contempt is based upon is incorrect, because MAGA isn’t even disproportionately driven by working class people as compared to other popular movements. From a statistical perspective, there’s no honest reason to see it as especially proletarian in character. The reason these liberals have propagated this narrative is because they don’t seek to heal the country’s historical divisions between people of different colors, but make themselves look like they’re capable of resolving such inequities. Which they of course can’t, so their only option is to blame working class whites for the persistence of systemic injustice.

If the white workers are incurably reactionary, and being pro-Russia is associated with reactionary politics according to liberals, then engaging in serious anti-imperialist practice should be avoided for fear of aiding reactionism. This is the idea that’s been sold to the left via Russiagate, the psyop whose goal is to propagate the narrative that the GOP “sold out to Putin.” It’s on this basis that the gatekeepers of our popular movements try to discredit the idea of combating imperialism’s psyops. Because this task requires backing Russia’s special operation, as well as building a multi-tendency anti-NATO movement, the empire-compatible left says these things aren’t worth it, since the popular base for these causes lies outside of left-wing spaces. The effort to combat NATO is made out to be a white, right-wing cause, so it’s regarded as unimportant, as a distraction from the more meaningful issues.

The issues these leftists seek to put into conflict with anti-imperialism are the domestic identity struggles: indigenous liberation, black liberation, and so on. What these leftists leave out is that none of those struggles can succeed as long as we neglect the task of combating imperialism’s psyops. U.S. hegemony is the strongest link in the chain of our capitalist state’s control. This is apparent from the introduction of the RESTRICT act, which would criminalize international anti-imperialist solidarity work, and from the Uhuru indictments, which targeted communists for challenging the Ukraine psyop. If the state is shifting to direct repression against anti-imperialists, we must be doing something right, and the act of combating these psyops must have more power than the imperialism-compatible left wants us to believe.

The state is so scared that the anti-NATO movement will keep gaining power, and bring the core’s workers to a synthesis between the domestic labor struggle and anti-imperialism. As soon as a worker in the core gains the awareness that they must fight in solidarity with imperialism’s global victims, they become a serious threat towards the ruling class. When this happens on a movement-wide level, the threat becomes all the more serious, and communism is allowed to become mainstream again.

If the state is trying to prevent this outcome, both through its intensifying repression and through its discourse manipulation, how can the bulk of the people not have revolutionary potential? If the bulk of them were labor aristocrats, or class traitors who are sure to help the capitalists, why are they the ones the state is trying so hard to stop from being exposed to anti-imperialist perspectives? We know what labor aristocrats do when they see any belief within the pro-imperialist orthodoxy challenged: they defend those ideas, because their class status has given them an incentive to become emotionally invested in them. A shrinking minority of Americans have this class status. That’s why only a minority of the population, mainly consisting of materially comfortable liberals, seriously cares about destroying Russia. The rest only believe NATO’s psyops at present because these psyops are the only accounts of the conflict they’ve so far seen.

The New Left doesn’t see it as a priority to combat the psyops, because they see anybody who supports Russia’s defiance of U.S. hegemony not just as wrong, but as an agent of reactionary politics. Which increasingly creates a dilemma for them, because even though they in theory support the idea of revolution, we’re seeing a rise in anti-imperialist sentiments among the people—the ones who are essential for making revolution happen. Support for aid to Ukraine is declining, and a coalition has formed between pro-Russian communists and libertarians to bring the true accounts of the conflict into our mainstream discourse. Those among the people who absorb the coalition’s anti-imperialist analysis are to become more visible actors in this discourse. Because as the liberal-aligned “communist” parties decline, Marxism’s principled anti-imperialist element is becoming the default strain that communists gravitate towards upon being radicalized.

The imperialism-compatible leftists can only respond to these developments by viewing an ever larger part of the masses as reactionary, even more explicitly than they do already. Whenever you hear one of these opportunists say that backing Russia in this conflict is reactionary, they’re calling the people reactionary. Because being consistent about siding against U.S. hegemony is simply the logical thing to do for a worker who understands their class interests.

Helping defeat U.S. hegemony, via waging an information war that renders Washington’s efforts at maintaining this hegemony untenable, is the most meaningful thing they can do to advance their interests at this stage in the class struggle. Weakening the narrative support behind Washington’s sanctions, war machine, and global destabilization psyops is what’s necessary for bringing the imperial state to the point where defeating it becomes possible. It’s also what’s necessary for breaking the Democratic Party’s grip over organizing spaces, and thereby letting the class conflict escalate. As the NATO psyops are what maintain Democrat influence over these spaces. To vilify every worker who does what’s needed to advance this goal, and acts in solidarity with the Russian people’s fight against U.S.-backed Banderism, is to vilify the people for asserting their material interests.

The argument these kinds of leftists use to say anti-imperialism is reactionary comes from how the right wing of the country’s ideological spectrum, as well as the more right-leaning flank of Marxists, are so far the places where sympathy for Russia has predominantly come from. What does this actually say though? It doesn’t say that opposing U.S. hegemony is wrong, it says that what’s considered the “left” in this country has failed to get the right priorities as the new cold war has developed. Instead of focusing on anti-imperialism, which it should consider the most important thing at the moment, it’s focused on building a support base among radlibs by reinforcing their views.

They justify this by positing liberals as the most valuable element of the masses, but the truth is that liberals represent a minority which isn’t compatible with revolutionary politics. They’ve rejected fighting for and winning the people, in favor of an opportunistic project that isn’t capable of defeating the state. This is the difference between the New Left as it exists in the era of the new cold war, and the Marxists who are serious about winning.

https://newswiththeory.com/the-new-left ... this-idea/


Here's the thing: just as the New Left is essentially petty bourgeois so libertarians and liberals are also. If the MAGAs are deep into the 'libertarian spirit' something cultivated in America's false and ruling class serving mythology then bringing them over to our side is very unlikely.These folks take their individualism seriously and personal even if they haven't done shit with their bootstraps. But the protest vote type, not to mention the non-voting citizens is where progress can be made. Just as the Dems paint the MAGAs as low class troglodytes doing a '180' on that position ain't all that great either, we must separate the fish from fowl. Tricky business, it will be interesting to see how the proliferating Republican primary field can differentiate those subsets.
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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 13, 2023 1:50 pm

Book: Manifesto for the crisis
What do workers need to understand if they are to solve their problems for good?

Ella Rule

Monday 12 June 2023

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This pamphlet pulls together analysis, demands and a programme for trade unionists and others to take to their workplaces and organisations as the crisis deepens and the class war intensifies.

Download a digital copy of this pamphlet. https://s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/s3.c ... Crisis.pdf

*****

Following the pandemic, the whole world is finding itself in a situation of economic chaos. The living standards of working people are falling precipitously almost everywhere in the world. Countries such as Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Ghana are already bankrupt and unable to purchase essentials needed by their populations – medicine, food and energy especially.

In Britain, things are also very bad, though not as bad as they are in most countries of the world. Prices have gone through the roof, and wages are in no way keeping up with this rampant inflation. The government is reducing expenditure on public services in order to reduce its borrowing requirements and to service existing loans, while simultaneously increasing taxation on the working population.

At the same time, it is spending outrageous amounts on armaments, on supporting war in Ukraine against Russia, and on various military provocations around the globe.

Nor is it yet prepared to impose a wealth tax on the multibillionaires (the bourgeoisie of the world) who are actually still enriching themselves to the tune of several billions a year while ordinary people (the proletariat) are being systematically pushed lower and lower into poverty and destitution.

Capitalism creates crisis and war
What must now surely be obvious is that the economic system that dominates the world (capitalism) is absolutely not fit for purpose. Despite the human ability to produce more and more with less and less effort, the vast majority of people are suffering a drastic fall in their living standards – and all because the capitalist mode of production has a fundamental design flaw that periodically causes it to stall simply because it has produced infinitely more than the impoverished people (and governments on their behalf) can afford to buy.

In these periods of crisis, people go without because they have produced too much, the markets are flooded, and the capitalists can’t make a profit, so living standards plunge as the capitalists try to rescue themselves at the expense of the working masses.

So desperate is this situation that the leading imperialist countries are driven to war, desperately trying to secure advantages they can no longer hope to gain by peaceful means.

This is why the USA, with the backing of European countries through the Nato alliance, has been threatening Russia in order to be able to dominate its vast territory and resources, moving huge amounts of weaponry into Ukraine and nurturing a fascist movement in the country to use against the Russian people; and it is why Russia has been fighting back.

The bill for all the armaments and weaponry being supplied by Britain to the Ukrainian fascists is presented for payment to the British taxpayer, while the billionaire owners of the armaments industry get ever richer.

Similar aggressive moves are being made by Nato against China, moving us ever closer towards a conflagration over the Chinese province of Taiwan that will again cost a fortune in treasure and in lives.

The aggression against Russia and China, both of which are in possession of very advanced weaponry that they have independently developed, in both cases purely for the purpose of defending themselves against Nato expansionist ambition rather than for purposes of aggression against anyone else, risks plunging the world into a third world war – a war that will not leave North America and Europe unscathed but runs a very real risk of the kind of damage being inflicted on our cities, towns and infrastructure that North America and Europe have unleashed on defenceless countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yugoslavia, Yemen, Congo, etc.

We could soon be seeing our historical buildings smashed to smithereens, our supplies of water, electricity and gas destroyed, our sewers blown up. Is that what we want?

Clearly not, but how do we stop it?

Workers need socialism
Once we understand that the real cause of the problem is the unavoidability of ever-worsening economic crises and war for as long as capitalism continues to be the economic system that dominates the world, then the solution becomes obvious.

When it is further understood that this economic system remains in use despite its lethal flaws because there is a tiny minority of billionaires in the world who benefit from it, whose private wealth and control over the world’s means of production and financial system provide them with the leverage to dictate terms to governments (whether ‘democratically’ elected or not), we cannot but realise that this tiny minority of people have to be dispossessed and overthrown.

Only in this way will we be able to get rid of the capitalist system and replace it with a system of rational planning, enabling us to use the means of production to meet the needs of the people who do the producing.

Because of the vast wealth at their command, this tiny minority of billionaires have at their disposal a massive propaganda machine (media, school syllabuses, academia, etc), along with armies of bureaucrats and government officials – to say nothing of the means of coercing people by violence to submit to their requirements through deployment of the army, the police and the judicial system.

It is clearly going to be no easy task to dislodge this entrenched class of rulers so that we can establish public ownership of the means of production and central planning for the benefit of the producers in place of the blind turmoil of the market. We can see from the way they conduct their wars for domination elsewhere that the resistance unleashed by the billionaire class (the bourgeoisie) against the risen workers will be massive, cruel, unprincipled and inhuman.

Nevertheless, it is the destiny of the working class (ie, everybody who depends for a decent livelihood on getting and keeping a job) to overcome the violence of the state machine wielded by and on behalf of the super-rich and to set up their own working-class (proletarian) state to ensure that an economic system is installed to replace capitalism – a socialist economic system that is not geared to private profit but to the ever-greater satisfaction of the rising needs of the people.

Didn’t socialism fail?
The Soviet working class and peasantry established a socialist state in 1917, which it was able to do because it rallied behind the leadership of the Communist party. After the socialist state was established, the powerful capitalists of the world moved heaven and earth to try to smash it – by military intervention first and then by economic sanctions, via massive assistance to dissidents to sabotage and destroy, and then through world war.

All steps taken by the working-class state to defend itself against these attacks were portrayed in all the world bourgeois propaganda media as vicious totalitarianism. This was done to give the workers of the world the idea that, terrible though their conditions may be under capitalism, communism would be even worse.

Nevertheless, when the capitalist world was enveloped in the Great Depression of the 1930s, which spread utter misery and want throughout the working-class population of all capitalist countries, the Soviet economy was going from strength to strength, with full employment, guaranteed housing and pensions, and a high level of education and healthcare provision available to all.

This is what communists are trying to achieve. However, unless millions of people actively support them, communists by themselves can achieve nothing. Moreover, in imperialist countries such as Britain, whose finance kings are extracting extraordinarily large amounts of profit from the oppressed countries by lending them money they can never repay at high rates of interest, the ruling class has been able to afford to buy off proletarian revolution (revolution by the oppressed and exploited) by making such concessions as offering free education and healthcare, alongside a minimum level of welfare and pensions.

As a result, they have made the lot of the working-class masses in the imperialist heartlands more bearable, while at the same time deluging them with anticommunist propaganda to impart the illusion that there is no point in going through all the trauma and chaos of a revolution because any communist state that emerged would be even worse than the worst that capitalism can provide.

In addition, the first socialist country, the Soviet Union, succumbed to the pressures put on it by the enemies of working-class power. She had during the second world war lost twenty-seven million people, a disproportionate number of whom would have been among the best of the country’s communists, bound as they must always be to take the lead in fighting the forces of darkness.

Some people whose Soviet education had enabled them to rise to leading and responsible positions in society began to envy the ostentatious wealth that their social counterparts in capitalist countries were able to accumulate. Young people who had only ever known a socialist society began to resent the restrictions that the USSR’s hostile environment forced it to maintain.

In the ideologically weakened Communist party, these tendencies made themselves felt to the point that the party leadership was able, in the name of ‘bringing Marxism-Leninism up to date’, to unleash a plan of gradually restoring capitalism. It did this by gradually restoring the capitalist marketplace in place of central planning, and by allowing profitability once more to become the decisive factor in determining what goods and services should be produced, and how and to whom they should be distributed.

As this supposedly ‘socialist’ market took over, the power of the popular masses to influence production and distribution decisions through representation on the various local, regional and all-union planning bodies was gradually eroded. Alongside stagnation in the living standards of the people, this produced the kind of cynicism among the masses that is typical in capitalist countries – except that, since it was all happening in the name of ‘Marxism-Leninism’ and ‘communism’, the people’s disillusion came to be aimed at communism itself.

It was in these circumstances that the working class was ousted from power in the Soviet Union, with millions, including those who may even have supported the overthrow of socialism, nevertheless finding themselves jobless or demoted, thrown out of their homes, and bereft of any form of social security.

Elderly people trying to sell their few possessions in order to survive became a common sight. Russian prostitutes became a phenomenon all over the world, especially in tourist destinations. Life expectancy plummeted by ten years and chaos reigned as the country’s vast wealth, built up by generations of Soviet workers, was plundered by western corporations, and the previously people-centred economy was subjected to the naked rule of the market in a barbaric onslaught that western economists described as ‘shock therapy’.

Eventually, under the leadership of president Vladimir Putin, a stop was put to the worst of the rot, and workers were able to derive some benefit at least from the high price of Russian oil, gas and other commodities. The working class has still not, however, regained state power, or been able to restore socialism.

Who can make the change we need – and how?
It seems as though it ought to be easy for the masses of humanity to rid itself of a defective economic system that only really benefits 0.1 percent (or less) of the population. But if it were easy in reality, then it would have already happened.

Angry people often riot in protest at the inhuman demands made of them and the outrageous injustices committed against them, but their riots rarely bring about any improvement in the situation – or, at least, none that is long-lasting. Those who lead the riots are forced to pay a heavy price in terms of prison sentences and ongoing punishment thereafter, while the real perpetrators of crimes against the people are left to gloat and wag a sorrowful finger at those who dared rise against them.

For people’s rage and anger to bring about the changes that are needed to free society from the irrationalities of capitalism, what is needed is a leadership body, the Communist party, that knows both what needs to be achieved and what needs to be done in order to achieve it; and that party needs to have the trust of the people so that they are willing to follow its lead.

If we look around the capitalist world today, and particularly if we look at the situation in Britain, one is hard put to identify any communist movement that inspires any confidence in its ability to lead a revolution to put an end to capitalism and establish a socialist planned economy.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the communist movement can only be described as being in a sorry mess, stacked up with self-identifying ‘communists’ who have actually given up on proletarian revolution and have resigned themselves to pleading with the capitalists and their governments that they should try to be a bit less mean. Because they do tend to have a smattering of Marxist understanding, the leaders of these parties realise that the major problems in the world are caused by the persistent reign of capitalism, which they are generally happy to denounce, but they feel totally helpless to do anything other than beg – and they pass on that helplessness to the working people at large.

It follows that what the communist movement needs is revitalisation. To start with, those who are already in the movement need to study the setbacks it has received – in particular, though by no means exclusively, the collapse of the Soviet Union – in order to understand what mistakes were made and how those mistakes can be avoided in the future.

It is essential to grasp the fact that in no way do those defeats signify that Marxism-Leninism is at fault, but that they are universally the result of departures from Marxism-Leninism.

Workers must regain confidence in their ultimate destination: a society where a centralised planned economy has replaced capitalism and where production is not for profit but for the maximum satisfaction of the needs of the masses, be those needs physical (eg, food, clothing, shelter and medical provision), cultural (eg, education, research, sport, literature, art and music), or spiritual (eg, entertainment, social meaning and encouragement to aim high).

They must break with their infatuation with bourgeois elections and remember that the only point of participating in such exercises is to expose their fraudulent nature in practice in the eyes of those whom our rulers seek to deceive.

They must recall again Marx’s watchword to the effect that workers must move on from merely demanding higher wages, and should be demanding that the wages system (capitalism) be brought to an end altogether.

All energetic class-conscious workers need to devote time and energy to building and strengthening a worthy communist party. No more sitting around in organisations wedded to parliamentarism and the election of left-leaning MPs who devote themselves to parroting the lies that the bourgeoisie tells about the states where the working class took power in the past under the leadership of its communist party.

We in the CPGB-ML believe that our party is a real Marxist-Leninist party that is worth joining and supporting, which offers Marxist-Leninist training to everybody who wants to make themselves fit to serve the people.

At the present time, our party is not strong enough to offer effective leadership to a revolutionary movement of the masses, but, given the vicious blows that the bourgeoisie is preparing to deliver to workers’ living standards, as well as their accelerating preparations for World War Three against Russia and China, it is urgent that anybody who can should add their weight to improving our ability to reach the people.

We urgently need greater forces that are capable of spreading the understanding that the workers do have the power to overturn the rule of the 0.1 percent and to install an economic system capable of providing for their needs.

Don’t sit on your hands; don’t fiddle while Rome burns!
Your class needs you; the future of humanity needs you!
Step forward and help make history!


https://thecommunists.org/2023/06/12/ne ... he-crisis/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 14, 2023 3:35 pm

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Orgs like PSL march with feds & war profiteers while attacking the anti-NATO movement for having contradictions

BY RAINER SHEA
JUNE 13, 2023

When the PSL marched this week with the DHS and Lockheed Martin personnel who are working to attach themselves to Pride, it proved that the elements of the left which have been attacking Rage Against the War Machine aren’t doing this due to RAWM’s contradictions. They’re doing it because trying to discredit a multi-tendency antiwar coalition—particularly one whose communist organizations take the pro-Russian stance—is in their best interests as left opportunists. These opportunists are willing to go to rallies that have problematic actors, including actors so problematic that they’re leaders of some of U.S. imperialism’s central institutions. They’re willing to do so because these rallies are about a cause which socialists and liberals can agree on, in this case the need for LGBT rights. When the cause is something socialists and liberals will never agree on, that being the need to consistently act against U.S. hegemony, they’ll denounce the rally and the coalition for being too impure.

Both of the sides in this ideological conflict have contradictions. The difference is that whereas one side is counter-hegemonic, the other one’s entire purpose is to perpetuate the pro-imperialist cultural hegemony. The latter is the one PSL, and the organizations and actors that share its imperialism-compatible interpretation of “Marxism,” have chosen to align with. The only way those who are comfortable with PSL’s double standard on contradictions can justify their stance is by hiding behind the queer and trans liberation cause. As in point to that cause’s righteousness, and say anybody who talks about this double standard is simply arguing against the cause. These apologists know what they’re doing. We all see what’s truly happening: feds and war profiteers are working to exploit the violence that’s being directed towards a marginalized group by claiming to be in solidarity with this group, then PSL has acted complicit in this exploitation while revealing its opportunistic motives for opposing RAWM.

PSL and those adjacent to it could have joined RAWM, without hurting any of the social justice causes. We know this because the PCUSA, one of those pro-Russian communist orgs which joined RAWM, makes clear its support for not just LGBT rights but the liberation of the U.S. empire’s internal colonies:

Socialism will be the start of educating the U.S. Population on the national question and the origins of national and the racial oppression for the Black, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Native American, Asian-Pacific, and all other nationally oppressed people and immigrants. Party involvement in the struggle for equality of the oppressed nationalities, the special oppression of women, and the struggle against discrimination, abuse, and harassment of the LGBT+ community will unite the whole working class. The heart of the day-to-day program of the PCUSA is the struggle for peace, democracy, equality; against racism and misogyny; and for improvement in the living conditions of all working people, manifested in the support of struggles of oppressed peoples’ struggles worldwide for national liberation and self-determination, and against imperialist aggression, and for the peaceful coexistence between states with different social systems.

If a communist org can have these principles on economic and social justice, while being able to enter into a coalition with ideologically different orgs on an equal footing, PSL wouldn’t have been betraying any social justice values by uniting with the anti-NATO movement. Yet I’m still arguing on the terms of the liberals. Even though it’s good for PCUSA to articulate this stance, it wouldn’t need to do so to be correct for joining with the RAWM coalition. Because building an effective anti-NATO movement, one that’s totally outside the control of the Democratic Party and proactive about putting together events, is an absolutely indispensable task for the communist movement. And RAWM’s counter-hegemonic character, based in its full ideological independence from the Democrats, makes this task achievable.

Due to this reality about just how highly we must prioritize anti-imperialism, the Center for Political Innovation (another communist org within the RAWM coalition) is by default doing more for the social justice causes PSL claims to care about than PSL itself is. Which is ironic, because CPI doesn’t bring up LGBT liberation on its site like PCUSA does. We can’t get national liberation, LGBT liberation, or women’s liberation until the bourgeois state is defeated, which requires we adopt an adequate anti-imperialist practice. Because the actors who are most eager to proclaim themselves as allies to these causes have rejected such a practice, they’re in practice setting back these causes. Whereas the actors within the anti-NATO movement, who largely don’t focus on these causes, are in practice doing more than anyone else to ensure that the state is defeated.

This doesn’t mean it’s ideal for these orgs and individuals which are principled on being anti-NATO to mostly not share PCUSA’s explicitly supportive stance on these social justice causes. If it were up to me, they all would be following PCUSA’s example on that. What I’ve had to learn is that I can’t control how everyone operates, and in a coalition-building context, that’s okay. They don’t need to follow the example of socially progressive communists on domestic issues to be having an overall positive impact on the revolutionary struggle. If they’re actively building an anti-NATO movement outside the grip of the Democratic Party, they’re worth collaborating with.

I cite PCUSA as a positive example not because I idealize that org, which I’m not a member of, but because it’s come to the correct conclusion about how to rectify the contradictions we’re confronted with. This conclusion is that we can’t try to rectify the domestic contradictions prior to the global ones, as the domestic issues themselves can’t be solved until U.S. hegemony has been sufficiently combated. First we need to fight imperialism’s psyops enough that this breaks the Democratic Party’s monopoly over our organizing and discourse spaces, freeing up the class struggle to escalate. Then, when class antagonism has entered its next stage and U.S. imperialism has been sufficiently weakened in its ability to do global damage, we can switch to the domestic issues as our primary sphere of ideological battle.

Note how the party says that socialism, as in a scenario where we’ve already implemented proletarian democracy, will be the first step in getting rid of white chauvinism and socially reactionary views among the population. Obviously we should speak out against national oppression and anti-queer violence in the present. The problem comes when developing radicals who don’t sufficiently understand the importance of the anti-NATO movement are influenced by the manipulations of the liberals. The liberals say it’s okay for them to reject an effective anti-NATO practice, and to act complicit in military-industrial complex pinkwashing or pro-bourgeois versions of “national liberation,” because social justice is important. All communists who aren’t right deviationists know social justice is important. That’s no excuse to choose an opportunist path which obstructs revolutionary progress. When you do that, you’re making yourself into a tool for the liberals, and validating their claim to being the definitive authorities on social justice.

https://newswiththeory.com/orgs-like-ps ... adictions/
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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 19, 2023 3:10 pm

The Purity Fetish and the Commodity Fetish
JUNE 17, 2023

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Graphic featuring Radhika Desai. Photo: Midwestern Marx.

By Radhika Desai – Jun 13, 2023
This is a transcript from Radhika’s presentation at the book launch of Carlos Garrido’s The Purity Fetish and the Crisis of Western Marxism, which you may purchase HERE.
Thanks for the invitation to be part of this panel of some of the most acute thinkers discussing this very important book. It is important particularly for its focus on dialectics, which is a philosophical mode that is much maligned and misunderstood in the English speaking world, dismissed as ‘Hegelian mystical fog.’ Garrido’s is a crystal clear discussion of dialectics and why it matters, very practically, today. In the few minutes I have, I want to liken Carlos’s discussion of what he calls the purity fetish – the inability of most of the Western left to give up its juvenile longing for some sort of pure socialism and embrace socialism in its inevitably soiled earthiness – to Marx’s discussion of ‘the fetish character of commodities.’ Though Carlos uses the term fetish in his title and argument, he does not draw the parallels that I see between Marx’s discussion of ‘the fetish character of commodities’ at the end of the first chapter of Capital, volume 1. I also value this opportunity to make this parallel because I am fed up with people, including many scholars claiming to be well versed on Marx and Capital, assuming that the ‘fetishism of commodities’ is about ‘consumerism.’

The similarities between Marx’s argument about the fetish character of commodities and Carlos’s argument about the purity fetish become clearest if we begin with what Carlos argues at the close of his introduction: that

​what can help overcome Western Marxism’s purity fetish is not simply, as Losurdo argues, “learning to build a bridge between the different temporalities” found in Marx’s notion of communism – that is, on one end, the utopian remote future where “society inscribes on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” and the actual future where communism is described as the “real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”

If, for Garrido, this intellectual move is not enough, this is very similar to Marx’s argument that the intellectual recognition of the source of value is not enough to banish the fetish character of commodities. The ‘mystical character’ attaches itself to the commodity thanks to its social form and the three-fold objectivity it gives to historically specific social relations. First is that ‘[t]he equality of the kinds of human labour takes on a physical form in the equal objectivity of the products of labour as values.’ Secondly, the measure of the expenditure of human labour-power by its duration takes on the form of the magnitude of the value of the products of labour.’ And thirdly, ‘the relationships between the producers, within which the social characteristics of their labours are manifested, take on the form of a social relation between the products of labour.’ Thus the fetish character of commodities arises from

​the tendency to equate different kinds of human labour into a uniform producer of values,
the tendency of values to be expressions of mere duration of labour and
the tendency of social relations to take on the form of relations between product
Marx’s discussion was prompted by the fact that this social objectivity of products when they are produced as commodities which went beyond their simple use values had been hard for political economy to grasp and continued to dog comprehension of capitalism and the dynamics of its most basic ‘cell,’ the commodity.

However, Marx also argued that the mere intellectual understanding was not going to be enough to banish the mysticism and replace it with clarity. That clarity would only be achieved by a clarification, and thus transformation, of the social relations:

​The belated scientific discovery that the products of labour, in so far as they are values, are merely the material expressions of the human labour expended to produce them, marks an epoch in the history of mankind’s development, but by no means banishes the semblance of objectivity possessed by the social characteristics of labour. Something which is only valid for this particular form of production, … appears to those caught up in the relations of commodity production … to be just as ultimately valid as the fact that the scientific dissection of the air into its component parts left the atmosphere itself unaltered in its physical configuration.

The reason is that the appearance arises spontaneously, not from thought but from practice. ​
​Men do not therefore bring the products of their labour into relation with each other as values because they see these objects merely as the material integuments of homogeneous human labour. The reverse is true: by equating their different products to each other in exchange as values, they equate their different kinds of labour as human labour. (KI: 166)

This means, again in Marx’s words, that ​
The veil is not removed from the countenance of the social life-process, i.e. the process of material production, until it becomes production by freely associated men, and stands under their conscious and planned control. This, however, requires that society possess a material foundation, or a series of material conditions of existence, which in their turn are the natural and spontaneous product of a long and tormented historical development.

​There is no way of banishing the semblance when it is daily reproduced by human social practice.

​Carlos’s argument in The Purith Fetish is similar. The purity fetish cannot be removed by mere intellectual advances. It requires the emergence of a different reality, in his case, a different kind of left. Mere intellectual realization of the truth is not enough.

​Although [it] is important, …. a more accurate ‘cure’ is for Western Marxism to reflect on the objective conditions which drive its purity fetish, and once self-conscious of these, move towards both changing these objective conditions (which means moving away from a PMC dominated left and towards a working class centered left, free of the dominant influence of the PMC Iron Triangle institutions and culture), and towards stripping its purity fetish outlook – something which can only be done through the rearticulation of its ambiguous ideological elements towards a consistent dialectical materialist worldview.

In essence, Garrido’s argument is that the purity fetish is rooted in the objective division between intellectual and manual labour which, in late capitalism, had developed into a veritable class divide. Indeed. In the twenty-first century, it is also a national divide, with the intellectual and manual elements of the working class occupying not just different parts of cities or different parts of a country, but different countries. The richer countries of the world not only concentrate within themselves the ‘intellectual’ functions of labour, but also rely on regularly siphoning off the ‘intellectual’ elements of the working classes of the rest of the world, appropriating these, gratis, from the rest of the world.

This is also why the struggle for socialism must also always be anti-imperialist.

Unless we move on from this sort of left, towards a left that is connected with the real struggles of working people world-wide, we will not be rid of the purity fetish.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-purity-f ... ty-fetish/

Indeed, juvenile, immature, and worse, theological. It might be understandable for undirected idealistic youth to fall into this pitfall. But once one achieves a certain amount of knowledge class interests are hard to ignore. Do they expect 'real socialism' to be delivered unsullied by angels? What part of history do they not understand?
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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 20, 2023 3:15 pm

The Battle Fronts in the Face of the Global Colonizing Offensive and the New Fascism
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JUNE 19, 2023
José Ernesto Guerrero

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Photo: Bill Hackwell

We will only be able to successfully confront capitalism, its colonizing desires and the neo-fascism that beats in its entrails from a common class front, from a fully emancipated consciousness.

At the end of June and beginning of July the XXVI edition of the Sao Paulo Forum will be held in Brasilia, a space that brings together political parties and leftist forces of diverse origins, but all focused on thinking and articulating strategies to face the great challenges of the contemporary world. The aim of the following notes is to reflect on fascism and neocolonialism as central issues in the debate of all progressive forces.

Capitalism is in a new phase of crisis, the product of several tendencies contained within it and of the consequences generated by its mode of production and consumption. Also, in addition to the financial, political, military and social crisis, there is the ecological crisis, with its unforeseeable consequences for the stability of life on the planet.

In this context of systemic crisis, we see how the liberal discourse and common sense are being permeated with increasingly ultraconservative and fascist positions. And how fascism goes from being a latent tendency within contemporary capitalism to become organized and gaining strength and political gravitation in many societies, even coming to power in countries of the hard core of today’s capitalism.

This emergence of fascism is the result, on the one hand, of the crisis and the deterioration of the standard of living of the working middle class. The social pacts that had maintained the economic status of this class after World War II were violently erased by neoliberalism since the 1980s.

The large amounts of social assistance, free quality public services and income protection policies gave way to successive waves of privatization and the disappearance of all these supports for their standard of living. The cataclysm was global and dismantled the precarious order that capitalism had sustained, not without contradictions, since 1945.

The fall of the Soviet Union convinced millions of militants, at least for a short time, that Margaret Thatcher’s neoliberal mantra: “There is no alternative”, was absolutely true. Many of these ex-militants not only broke with their militancy, but have been a willing part of the campaigns to demonize any revolutionary anti-systemic alternative.

So the current neo-fascism is nourished by the deterioration of the quality of life of the workers and the middle classes (where its main cadres and ideologues come from), by the crisis of the fall of the USSR and the delegitimization of the radical revolutionary alternatives and by the crisis of the world capitalist system itself. And to the extent that these crises deepen we will see how fascism, which is nothing other than the most reactionary entrails of capitalism, will continue to gain strength and structure and to add new sectors of the nation within which it develops, appealing to the chauvinist and pseudo-social discourse.

In a simultaneous process, we see how contemporary capitalism deploys its powerful tools of symbolic production in an effort to accompany its financial tentacles with the domination of consciences. Specialized texts already speak of 4th generation warfare to refer to that which understands the consciousness and the universe of representations of the subjects as a space to wage the battle for domination and, to this end, an amazing repertoire of means is deployed as a result of the joint work of diverse knowledges, all placed in function with the same objective: to produce a person who, at the same time that his intellectual capacities are diminished and lethargic, is a faithful reproducer of the dominant logic and, even more important, a self-sacrificing servant of capital.

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We will be able to successfully confront capitalism, its colonizing desires and the neo-fascism that pulsates in its entrails from a common class front, from a fully emancipated consciousness.

It is in this scenario that we must reflect in order to fight our battle. Therefore, without wishing to exhaust the subject, we dare to point out some scenarios where we can and must give battle against these logics:

1.The battle for “common sense”.

In his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci points out the need for revolutionary forces, in the process of building their hegemony, to impose themselves, also, as common sense.

Common sense is socially constructed and in it are sediment, in the form of the most elementary logic, of practically pre ideological appearance, an infinite number of formulas and elements that reproduce the logics and meanings of the prevailing class and system of production. This is what happens with the right to private property or with other even cruder myths, such as that of the poor seen exclusively as a lazy person who has not wanted to work hard enough to get out of his situation. Dynamiting this common sense has been the first task of the revolutionary forces in all epochs. That was the task that fell to the Enlightenment, in the stage that preceded the Great French Revolution and which has a very illustrative example in the Dictionary on which Diderot and D’Alembert worked.

In the battle for common sense, neo-fascism, like its historical counterpart, appeals to populism, pseudo-science and lies. Our bet must be on truth and ethics, even if it is sometimes a longer and more tortuous path. In this battle we have on our side the weapons of criticism (as a prelude to the criticism of weapons) and we must use them systematically to deconstruct its logic and show the flaws and dangers it masks.

2. Digital social networks as a scenario of symbolic dispute

Digital social networks are tools that emerged in capitalist modernity and that respond to its logics and needs. As Marcuse pointed out in The One-Dimensional Man, the technologically advanced societies of contemporary capitalism produce the technology they need and that which responds to their interests. Technology is not neutral; on the contrary, it is a tool that complements and perfects the domination of contemporary capitalism. This not only gives it a character and meaning, but also gives it a clear ideological bias.

We see then in digital social networks how, with the consent of the algorithm and the owners of the algorithm, the most conservative discourses and the most extreme right-wing positions are gaining more and more space. By its own configuration, the algorithm is very useful when it comes to isolate in bubbles the left-wing and counter-systemic positions, but it is not at all effective when it comes to isolate the ultra-right-wing ones. It is no coincidence then that groups, pages and profiles proliferate where this discourse is produced and reproduced with relative ease.

And as the colonizing and neo-fascist discourse rests on the passive consent of the prevailing order and its allegation consists, in essence, of ideological truths that pretend to be disguised as common sense, it is no coincidence that they find easy and rapid dissemination both in the form of memes and videos on YouTube and other platforms and a long etcetera.

Confronting them requires understanding the nature of these digital social networks, so that we use them to fight the symbolic battle with full awareness of our starting disadvantage. Understanding them not as the central space, but as a complementary space. Digital social networks should serve us to create real social networks, where activism and cyber activism combine.

We gain nothing by being a mass of passive workers who in the evenings vent all their frustration on digital profiles, often under false names. Our battle has to be in communities, in interpersonal interaction, a central element. Digital social networks are tools of contemporary capitalism to isolate us, to enclose us in bubbles of self-reaffirmation and to permeate us with liberal ideology. To wage the symbolic battle in these networks implies not losing sight of these elements and understanding that militancy must extend beyond them.

3. The battle for culture

The consolidation of any political, economic and social order always passes through the consolidation of a new culture. Culture is both the space of symbolic resistance of the peoples and the fundamental stage of the hegemonic dispute.

Contemporary capitalism, with its powerful cultural industries, has been trying for decades, with greater or lesser success, to impose a hegemonic cultural form (North American) to the detriment of all others. To the point that even the countries of the central core of capitalism see their own cultures threatened. This hegemony of North American culture is parallel to the hegemony of North American capitalism.

Thus, to the traditional confrontation between “the cultured” and “the popular”, in which every more or less developed national culture is debated, is added the confrontation between the dominant culture and the dominated cultures and, at another level, we can also speak of the battle between the hegemonic culture of the status quo and the battle of the truly counter-hegemonic cultural forms.

The counter-hegemonic culture has the power to corrode the established order and it does so both through biting mockery and through the starkest and most expressive denunciation. In that sense, both Brecth’s The Avoidable Ascension of Arturo Ui and Picasso’s Guernica have done so much damage to fascism, to its symbolic legitimization. The tenacious (and sometimes shocking, though always heroic) resistance of Cuba and the diverse forms of popular self-organization with which the peoples resist barbarism have done as much damage to the domination of capitalism. All cultural production, be it artistic or organizational, of ideas or practices, which oppose capital must be supported, studied and promoted.

4. The battle for History

With complete accuracy, Néstor Kohan points out in his book Marx in his (third) world that the Materialist Conception of History turns this, history, into a weapon at the service of revolution. Against the idealist and romantic conception of history, Marxists raise the understanding of history as a systematic plundering of one class by another, of some peoples by others. In angry reaction against the Hegelian thesis that the Spirit was incarnated in each epoch in specific peoples, which sustained the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century conception of colonialism as a civilizing enterprise, they raise the brutal understanding of how each mode of production was built and sustained, up to capitalism which, to use Marx’s graphic expression, comes into the world dripping blood from all its pores.

Marxism sustains before history what Walter Benjamin would later put in one of his Theses on the philosophy of history: every document of civilization is at the same time a document of barbarism. We cannot accept the history of the victors nor that other history that tends to normalize, to convert into natural, into eternal, that which are nothing more than transitory modes of production.

5. The battle for revolutionary consciousness

The proletarians are still today the subjects of revolutionary change. The proletarian is not the industrial worker, as seemed to be identified in a stage of stereotypical type of work. The proletarian is anyone who does not own any means of production and has nothing to sell but his physical or intellectual labor power. In this sense the proletariat is the great mass of contemporary societies, in which the process of concentration of capital deprives more and more people of their means of life.

To strip this growing proletarian mass of its class and revolutionary consciousness, contemporary capitalism has applied the old Latin maxim: divide and rule. That is why an infinite number of theories and militancy have flourished that place an exclusive and often exclusive emphasis on gender identity, sex, skin color, etc. They reduce us to a partial determination and thereby rob us of the collective point of view of totality, which, as Lukács argued, is fundamental for the emergence of full class consciousness.

In this battle against fragmented identities, critical thinking is fundamental. Disputing meanings and narratives, in an era where narratives are as or more important than truth itself. To understand that we can only successfully confront capitalism, its colonizing desires and the neo-fascism that beats in its entrails from a common class front, from a fully emancipated consciousness. And it is not to ignore the partial identities of the subject, it is not to reduce it to them. It is to understand that the common cause is not my happiness, but the happiness of all. It is the unity where the different, the plural is contained.

Either we give birth to this class consciousness among the oppressed or we will be brutally overwhelmed by the tanks of colonialism and fascism.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/06/ ... w-fascism/
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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 23, 2023 3:08 pm

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If Marxists try to appeal to radical liberals, we’ll never win the people’s support

BY RAINER SHEA
JUNE 23, 2023

Communism used to be a mainstream force in the United States. The state saw communists as capable of replicating the Russian revolution, so it orchestrated mass raids against them simply for being involved in the movement. Communists were a pivotal force in labor organizing. Communists were able to pose big enough of a threat to American capitalism’s future that FDR got intimidated into implementing the New Deal.

Then the efforts to force them out of public life scared the movement’s major representatives (too easily) into ceasing their operations. And when the Black liberation struggle and the antiwar movement both underwent a great rise in influence, making a communist revival possible, the state destroyed the Black Panther Party while building a pseudo-radical alternative to Marxism. That alternative being the New Left, the generation of critical theorists who are informed not by the thinkers who’ve actually advanced the class struggle, but by CIA academics like Herbert Marcuse.

This effort to transform “Marxism” from something genuinely threatening, into just another one of the “critical theories” that liberals can take or leave in their analyses, was so successful that it turned the Panther Angela Davis into an agent for it. From the start, Davis was a student of Marcuse’s Frankfurt School, and now adheres to its ideas more than ever. Davis was part of a group of political actors who further deradicalized American communism by disavowing “authoritarian” socialism after the USSR’s fall, and is among the “radical” public figures who promote the Vote Blue stance.

It’s these kinds of figures who represent the default sources of guidance that developing radicals in modern America turn to, because for generations we haven’t had a mainstream Marxist movement that’s authentic. Aside from Parenti, the only voices in our major discourse who’ve claimed to be communists do not actually practice Marxism. They practice a distorted version of “Marxism” that acts like class struggle is only one among a series of struggles, ignoring how all the different identity struggles are themselves class-based.

It’s this focus these figures put on racial, national, women’s, and LGBT liberation which makes them widely seen as credible. The assumption many developing radicals make is that these critical theorists and their ideas have a value which can’t be overlooked, due to the importance of rectifying the distinct types of injustices that are experienced by different parts of the people. The fallacy in this idea is that we Marxists are obligated to let our ideas and actions be influenced by New Left thinkers, just because these thinkers support social justice. Which extends not just to pseudo-Marxist academics like Davis and Horne, but to the activists and online discourse agents that are informed by this type of revisionist thinking. As Parenti pointed out, in the post-McCarthyism era there’s arisen an “Anything But Class” left, and in the social media age this element has been able to portray itself as being more influential than it actually is. To make it look like Marxists have no choice but to appeal to it.

I talk about these radical liberals like they’re part of an astroturf campaign because that’s essentially what their movement is. They get their perceived credibility by making it look like if you lose favor with them, there’s no way you can succeed. Like they hold the power to make you forever irrelevant. This is the idea that comes through in how they claim to speak for entire marginalized groups, implying that if you don’t appease them, then you’ve by extension alienated yourself from everybody within these groups. This threat of theirs is a bluff, a bluff that’s used to intimidate developing Marxists into abandoning their Marxism.

We’ve seen this in how many American Marxists who’ve been able to unlearn the anti-communist narratives about existing socialism have reacted to the Ukraine war. As well as to the recent intensification of ideological conflicts within the left which relate to the war. These actors praise China and the DPRK. Yet when China has effectively backed Russia in the conflict, while the DPRK has outright stated support for Russia, they’ve taken the “neither NATO nor Russia” stance. Their declining to follow socialist Korea’s example of being in solidarity with the Russian people’s struggle against Nazism has everything to do with a desire to fit in within “left” spaces. Which in a post-Russiagate world means distancing oneself from the pro-Russia stance, since this stance is portrayed by the left as inherently right-wing.

When “but is this what someone on the ‘left’ would think?” is the basis for your ideology, the act of “supporting” existing socialism loses its substance. Loving China, Cuba, or Korea becomes just another part of one’s social media brand. What’s the point of “supporting” the successful revolutions if you’re not willing to adopt the ideas and practices that can make you win proletarian victory within your own country? This is a shallow kind of “support,” especially when coming from a resident of one of the imperialist countries that’s waging war against socialism.

By declining to fight the information war against NATO, these modern Anything But Class leftists are not just acting chauvinistically towards imperialism’s global victims, but hindering the revolutionary struggle in their own countries. We won’t be able to get revolution in the core until U.S. hegemony has been sufficiently weakened, a cause that we in the core have the ability and the responsibility to contribute to. The more we weaken imperialism’s narrative control, the more untenable its war operations become. To deny this is to avoid fulfilling an essential duty.

How to reconcile this decision not to do the things the revolutionary struggle needs us to do the most at the moment, with the belief these radlibs have in the need for rectifying our systemic injustices? The way they’ve rationalized committing this betrayal is by claiming it can’t be a betrayal, because fighting the narrative war against NATO is according to them not the best way we can weaken the state at this stage. They claim that combating U.S. hegemony is secondary to the fights regarding our domestic social issues. This has come through not just in how I’ve seen radlibs directly say this, but in how CPUSA, PSL, and the other anti-Russian socialist orgs consistently prioritize the culture war over the anti-imperialist movement.

I say the culture war, and not social justice, because these orgs don’t truly advance social justice. They only tail the Democratic Party by reactively holding events and making statements whenever the Democrats are trying to co-opt a struggle against social injustice, never asserting their own agency within protest movements. Because if they were to do something disruptive, like become principled and aggressive about opposing Democrat foreign policy, this would hinder their ability to appeal to the DNC’s base.

The calculus behind this liberal tailist strategy, where they compromise on anti-imperialist stances to not appear “pro-Putin” or continuously try to distance themselves from anti-NATO groups that liberals have deemed untouchable, is the notion that liberals are the group best able to be brought towards Marxism. This is a fallacy. Even if it were true—which it no longer is, since Russiagate has made many on the “left” into obstinate neocons—we still need to win the parts of the people who aren’t liberals. What about the apoliticals, many of whom don’t vote because their class status has made them alienated from bourgeois politics? What about the types of conservatives who’ve gravitated to libertarianism or MAGA only because these camps have initially looked like the best alternatives to what the Democrats offer, and could be brought to communism?

A growing number of those in these categories are coming to an anti-imperialist consciousness in reaction to Ukraine. Why should we discard them? Because they have backwards beliefs? Mao said it’s our job to bring those with backwards beliefs to a better place, should we ignore him?

There are two alternatives to joining the united front that’s emerged against NATO: join with the PSL-aligned camp that’s interested in tailing the Democrats rather than in winning; or denounce every organizational element of the American socialist movement, due to none of these elements being free from real or perceived contradictions. If you do the latter, the only place for you to go is the insular online communities the modern ABC left has formed. Spaces that are built on resentment, rather than on anything constructive or deliverable, as they have no organizational basis and don’t want to adopt the strategies needed for attaining one. To win the people, Marxists have to focus on winning the people, not on appeasing the gatekeepers of these spaces. It’s best for us to build our movement without any fear of what the unserious people will say.

https://newswiththeory.com/if-marxists- ... s-support/
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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Fri Jun 30, 2023 4:58 pm

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“Marxists” who vilify the people for having contradictions will never win the people

BY RAINER SHEA
JUNE 28, 2023

I recently found out that a statistic I’ve been using to support my arguments about how much the American people’s conditions have deteriorated—this being that over 60% of Americans now live paycheck to paycheck—is in need of more context. You’d think this means essentially all of those within this category are economically struggling. Yet a sizable minority of them are not working class but upper income, and only live paycheck to paycheck because of how expensive their consuming habits are.

The majority of the country’s people are still effectively living in poverty, and this is apparent from looking at how there are also many Americans who don’t technically fall within that “paycheck to paycheck” category yet are quite economically dispossessed. There are the 22% of Americans who fall within what the Ludwig Institute for Economic Prosperity calls the “real unemployment” category, which encapsulates anyone within the U.S. labor force who “does not have a full-time job (35+ hours a week) but wants one, has no job, or does not earn a living wage, conservatively pegged at $20,000 annually before taxes.” This includes people who can’t live paycheck to paycheck, since they aren’t exactly “living,” only existing. Existing in a paycheck-free situation where they lack access to sufficient food, the financial resources to be able to keep up with their bills, or even housing.

By the time the pandemic began, 43% of American households couldn’t afford a budget that includes housing, food, transportation, healthcare, and a cellphone. With the damage that our government’s mismanagement of the pandemic has since done to the working class, as well as the effects of the inflation crisis on those who aren’t upper income, this living standard crisis has absolutely come to be felt by a bigger proportion of the people. Much of the former workforce has been shoved into early retirement, and not even all of those affected by this shift are older people; many of them are long Covid victims who’ve been made disabled. Then there’s the further disappearance of opportunities for those who are physically able, or who aren’t having to take care of disabled relatives (as many others are). As U.S. News & World Report observed last year, prior to when the Ukraine proxy war had had its full effects on the inflation crisis:

Although there have been some signs in the past two months of strong hiring that the labor market is loosening somewhat, the overall picture of a tight job market is here for a while. The retired baby boomers, especially those in the 65-74 age range, have also cut into the labor supply. “These were people with degrees, probably successful,” says Ron Hetrick, a labor economist at Emsi Burning Glass. “They’re not coming back.” Restrictive immigration policies that have shaped national politics throughout the past several years show no signs of easing and are another drag on the labor market, reducing supply by around 1 million or more workers. And COVID-19, whether through death, illness or long-term disability, has further reduced the available supply of labor.

These pieces of evidence that the U.S. population has now mostly been pushed to the economy’s margins vindicate the decades-old predictions that at some point, the U.S. empire would force a majority of its own people into poverty. Which makes the attitude among our insular “Marxist” radical liberals that most Americans are labor aristocrats, and should be morally judged by the same standards one would judge labor aristocrats, more absurd than ever. At the same time that the people within our conditions are being subjected to a process of engineered social collapse, which merely represents an acceleration of the one that began with neoliberalism, it’s totally anti-materialist to blankedly condemn the people as synonymous with their government or their ruling class.

What I’ve realized from reading Parenti, who stopped making commentary years before the pandemic or the Ukraine war, is that America’s living standard crisis didn’t even have to get this widespread for U.S. workers to deserve such respect. All the way back in 1989, Parenti wrote:

Americans are victimized by economic imperialism not only as workers but as taxpayers and consumers. The billions of tax dollars that corporations escape paying because of their overseas shelters must be made up by the rest of us. Additional billions of our tax dollars go into foreign-aid programs to governments that maintain the cheap labor markets that lure away American jobs—$13.6 billion in 1986, of which two-thirds was military aid. Our tax money also serves as hidden subsidies to the big companies when used as foreign aid to finance the kind of infrastructure (roads, plants, ports) needed to support extractive industries in the Third World. Nor do the benefits of this empire trickle down to the American consumer in any appreciable way. Generally the big companies sell the goods made abroad at as high a price as possible on American markets. Corporations move to Asia and Africa to increase their profits, not to produce lower-priced goods that will save money for American consumers. They pay as little as they can in wages abroad but still charge as much as they can when they sell the goods at home.

This harm that maintaining an imperialist military does to the imperial center’s people was present prior to the War on Terror and the cold war on China, which have only worsened U.S. austerity by multiplying the military budget. Then there are the environmental damages Americans suffer as a consequence of living under an imperial state, which under our conditions is by definition a capitalist state:

Other injustices inflicted by the empire upon poorer nations come home to take a toll upon ordinary AMericans. For years now the poisonous pesticides and hazardous pharmaceuticals that were banned in this country have been sold by their producers to Third World nations where regulations are weaker or nonexistent…The absence of environmental protections throughout most of the Third World affects the health and welfare of Americans in other ways (along with the well-being of other peoples and the earth’s entire ecology). The chemical toxins and other industrial effusions poured into the world’s rivers, oceans, and atmosphere by fast-profit, unrestricted multinational corporations operating in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and the devastation of Third World lands by mining and timber companies and by agribusiness, are seriously affecting the quality of the air we all breathe, the water we all drink and the food we all eat…

The dumping of industrial effusions and radioactive wastes also may be killing our oceans. If the oceans die, so do we, since they produce most of the earth’s oxygen. Over half the world’s forests are gone compared to earlier centuries. The forests are nature’s main means of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Today, the carbon dioxide buildup is transforming the chemical composition of the earth’s atmosphere, accelerating the “greenhouse effect” by melting the earth’s polar ice caps and causing a variety of other climatic destabilizations. While the imperialists are free to roam the world and plunder it at will, we are left to suffer the immediate and long-term consequences.


That all of these evils have worsened since 1989, as well as been joined by additional evils like police militarization, techno-dystopian censorship of dissent, and destructive banking concentration, makes Parenti’s argument more correct than ever. And as I said, even if the American people were still living in the comparative “good times” of the pre-2008 crisis world, all those things he pointed out would still be true.

The idea Parenti was aiming to get across is that to simplify the American people to being “bad” because they’re complicit in the imperial order would be anti-materialist. There’s no way to describe such a perspective other than as infantile. We all know Americans are complicit in imperialism, the question is what should we do with this information. Should we, the minority of Americans who’ve so far gained class consciousness, smugly cast judgment on everyone else around us for not yet having come to our perspective? Should we hate and perpetually punish ourselves for having been born in a certain place? Should we all move away? By the insular American left’s reasoning, there’s nothing constructive we in the core are capable of doing. And therefore no reason to take responsibility for our circumstances, and do the work necessary for winning workers victory where we are.

In pre-revolutionary Russia, the people absolutely had contradictions. Many of them held beliefs that were backwards, and by czarist Russia’s imperialist nature, many of them held allegiance to the imperial order. Did this stop the Bolsheviks from building a relationship with them? Did it cause the Bolsheviks to overstate the proportion of Russians who were invested in imperialism? Lenin assessed that it was a “privileged minority” of the people who were labor aristocrats with an obstinate desire to maintain imperial extraction. The same is true for the people under our conditions. The obstinate liberals, who make up the primary element of the people that are solidly invested in the neocon ideology, are not most Americans. Most of the people only believe imperialism’s psyops at present because they haven’t yet been exposed to the anti-imperialist accounts of events surrounding Ukraine, Taiwan, Serbia, Ethiopia, and so on.

When confronted with these realities about our conditions, the “Americans are bad” leftists will claim that they’re aware of such realities, even though it doesn’t seem like they are from looking at their rhetoric. These leftists will say that even though they feel the character of the people is reducible to such a simplistic and villifying label, they intend to bring the people to a revolutionary consciousness. Yet just by making these blanket statements, these leftists have already proven that they themselves lack a genuinely revolutionary outlook. Nobody who knows how to win workers victory would be going around denouncing the people. And how can somebody who fundamentally lacks the knowledge necessary to be the people’s teacher take on that role?

To those within the “left” online circles and organizing spaces, it can look like these insular types of leftists have that kind of capability. But they don’t, because getting a lot of likes on social media doesn’t equate to winning the people. A niche minority of the people are familiar with these spaces. That’s the extent of the following somebody can gain while operating under the radical liberal ideology, which is conducive to vilifying the people. We know this because at no point in history have revolutionary movements won when their leaders have viewed the same people they’re trying to liberate with scorn. “Revolutionary” leaders who think like that always end up detaching themselves from the people, therefore rendering their own victory impossible.

We’re seeing this now in the ways the USA’s established “left” orgs are refusing to become active agents in the anti-imperialist movement, the front of the struggle that we need to advance in order to make all other fronts winnable. Instead of helping build a sustainable and principled anti-NATO movement, like the country’s pro-Russian communist orgs are, the orgs that exclusively seek to appeal to those within the “left” niche are acting apathetic about the international struggle.

They’re acting apathetic about anti-imperialism for the same reason they view the people as inherently reactionary: because the idea set they base their practice in is not materialist, but idealist. It’s based in a mentality that blames the people for the failure of the revolutionary movement, as if radicals are already doing everything right and have no reasons to reexamine their beliefs. If these beliefs include an apathetic view of geopolitics, then in their minds that view isn’t worth giving up. The insular left believes it’s the people, not those who aspire to lead the people, who need to correct themselves.

The hubris of this mindset is obvious. For decades, it’s held back the rebuilding of the communist movement in the United States. It lets developing radicals rationalize not taking responsibility for any pro-imperialist or otherwise liberal beliefs they hold, blaming the people for their own inability to build a connection with the people. If we want to win, we have to gain a love for the people. A love that motivates us to correct anything wrong with our own views and practices, for the sake of bringing our society to socialism.

https://newswiththeory.com/marxists-who ... he-people/

It is sadly true that too many purported leftists ape the liberals in regarding the working class as 'sheeple', backwards, 'deplorables', irredeemable.
But just as some were in Tsarists times so today we have libertarians who act essentially as right reformists. In current matters they would have the Us direct it's aggression against China, not Russia. And don't think that racism doesn't figure in that alignment. Gotta sort the fish from fowl.

The main thesis of this piece might also be applies to environmentalists who insist upon 'de-growth' without consulting the Global South. That is the road to eco-fascism.
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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Sun Jul 02, 2023 11:49 am

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The united front is an essential strategy for communists. In today’s USA, that front needs to center the anti-NATO struggle.

BY RAINER SHEA
JUNE 30, 2023

Image from United World International

Lenin and the Panthers taught us the same lesson: that forming a united front, where the communists who are most correct in their analysis join with other ideological elements on the basis of shared desire to advance a key issue in the class struggle, is a crucial part of winning proletarian power. For the Bolsheviks, as illustrated by Lenin’s Should revolutionaries work in reactionary trade unions, this key issue which communists needed to make alliances over was evidently trade unionism. For the Panthers, as illustrated by their forming ties to certain reactionary whites via the Rainbow Coalition, the key issue was labor organizing in a broader sense.

As Young Patriots member Hy Thurman has recalled about how his org’s involvement in the alliance both advanced the class struggle, and got him and his circle to overcome their racist ideas:

In the Young Patriots our goal was to organize white people, that’s the role we had sort of taken and been given in the Rainbow Coalition. And back then we made the statement, “Go and organize your own.” You know, we don’t need you in Berkeley and other places trying to organize us. We’ll do it ourselves. So you go in your own neighborhood because that’s where the racism exists—and you have to understand that we were racist. I mean, we were raised in racism. It was indoctrinated in us. We were raised racist, but we were becoming antiracist because we began to see what was happening during the Civil Rights Movement. And we began to learn about stuff like Blair Mountain and about the Highlander Center in Tennessee and Miles Horton and the Bradens and those folks. And these were things we were curious about. But yet we still had that identity of a southern person. A hillbilly. You know? We didn’t use it in a condescending way. The term hillbilly was derogatory for some, but it was a part of our identity. We challenged those people who tried to use it in a bad way.

For those of us in the modern USA to be able to get the workers movement back to that point it was at decades agp, where labor power represented a serious threat to the ruling class, we have to build a united front around our moment’s most pivotal issue: the fight against U.S. hegemony. To make communism mainstream again, and turn our extreme class contradictions into an opportunity for defeating the capitalist state, we’ll first need to sufficiently combat NATO’s psyops. Which means unifying the forces that share the goal of building an antiwar movement that’s genuinely and totally independent from the Democratic Party.

Because of the longtime absence of an antiwar or labor movement that’s not been captured by the Democrats, serious class struggle hasn’t existed in this country for a long time either. Class struggle has only been spontaneous mobilizations of workers who are pushed to strike, without a vanguard party being there to make this activity organized and infused with revolutionary mass education. And the small communist parties that do exist in this country, and that have been trying to take advantage of the recent spontaneous worker outrages by growing their numbers, represent a kind of faux-vanguard industrial complex that exists to tail the Democrats.

The way these opportunist groups have been able to divert and diffuse radical sentiments is through the continued normalization of pro-imperialist narratives within radical spaces. Through a culture that makes it seem acceptable for “radicals” to repeat the State Department’s psyops about China, Russia, and other U.S. target countries.

When somebody’s priority is to draw recruits and online followers from these imperialism-compatible radicals, they naturally adopt an apathetic attitude towards the international struggle. They feel that those within “left” spaces are necessarily the most advanced element of the people and the most compatible with Marxism, so they’re dis-incentivized from challenging this circle’s NATO-accommodating belief systems. There is an option other than this cowardly appeasement of bad actors who fundamentally don’t care about the class struggle. This option is to build the anti-NATO united front.

This front doesn’t just give those within it who presently have reactionary sentiments an opportunity to get exposed to better ideas. It also enables us to build a relationship with the people. And it’s not only one option for doing this out of many; the united front is our sole way to reach the people. Think about it strategically: what other way can we realistically bring the anti-imperialist perspective to the majority of society, than by utilizing the platforms that the other elements of the anti-NATO movement have? If you want to promote anti-imperialism while cutting yourself off from everybody within the anti-NATO movement who doesn’t presently share your views on domestic issues, I know you won’t succeed at reaching any more minds outside of a niche. Because I went by this strategy for years, and it wasn’t until I gave up my ingrained phobias about joining with other kinds of anti-imperialists that I could truly come to represent a threat to our ruling institutions. So will be the case in your experiences as a political actor.

When Lenin talked about the folly of the “left” revolutionaries who believed they could defeat the state while isolating themselves from all the other sections of trade unionism, he was illustrating the same lesson today’s equivalents of those purity fetishists need to learn. Just like how the purist socialists of Lenin’s time couldn’t build an ideologically “pure” version of the labor movement while gaining a following that existed beyond a niche, our purist socialists willingly handicap themselves by only building ties with those deemed “acceptable” within left online circles. These “acceptable” individuals and groups lack the platforms, as well as the independence from the Democratic Party, to be able to genuinely threaten NATO. Why is Rage Against the War Machine the project that got attacked by the corporate media, as opposed to PSL’s ANSWER rally which could operate without such institutional opposition?

It’s because our ruling institutions view an antiwar coalition which functions independently from liberal reformism as infinitely more threatening than one that’s invested in tailing liberals. As well as more threatening than one whose organizers seek to operate entirely on their own, and to build a whole new movement out of nothing.

A liberal tailist antiwar project by definition is not truly “antiwar,” because its priority is not to destroy the liberal cultural hegemony that maintains U.S. imperialism. Its priority is to bring in enough liberals to be able to build something that passes for a serious “socialist” org, with no intention of challenging the anti-Russian views that these liberals hold. If these liberal tailist orgs oppose NATO’s psyops in such a serious way, their ability to draw from the left wing of the labor aristocracy will be jeopardized.

That’s the mentality which guides the entities on the left that are seeking to discredit the idea of an anti-NATO united front: an opportunistic fear of alienating a minority of comfortable people who aren’t compatible with revolutionary politics. The united front is guided by the mentality that we need to build a relationship not with the privileged minority, but with the economically struggling majority. Which requires allying with the political forces that don’t act to reinforce the Democratic Party’s dominance. This will come at the cost of alienating the political forces which do have that role. Yet after one has seen the examples of revolutionaries who’ve had to disregard the opinions of the liberal tailists in order to reach the people, it becomes apparent that alienating these tailists is a good thing. We don’t need them on our side, we need the people on our side.

https://newswiththeory.com/the-united-f ... -struggle/
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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 07, 2023 3:21 pm

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The American “left” supporting Ukrainian Nazis has proven social fascist theory right

BY RAINER SHEA
JULY 5, 2023

If the social democrats were willing to contribute to the anti-imperialist struggle, like libertarians are, we Marxists would gladly join with them in the anti-NATO united front, like we have with the libertarians. But the social democrats haven’t chosen that righteous path, and neither have most of the other non-Marxist elements of the American left. That includes the “red libs” who claim to represent Marxism-Leninism, yet have reacted to the recent escalations in the anti-imperialist struggle by denouncing Russia’s special operation, attacking the anti-NATO united front, or both.

The indications that we would get to a point this bad, where the default stance on the American left is to support the Ukrainian Nazis our government is aiding, became apparent when Sanders began ideologically leading the left towards backing the hybrid against Russia. This betrayal was foreshadowed when Sanders endorsed Clinton, as well as when he sided with pro-imperialist policies throughout the majority of his career; but for me and for many others, it became clear that Sanders was not truly a counter-hegemonic force when he promoted Russiagate.

When he decided to participate in the warmongering campaign started by the Clinton campaign, MSNBC, the intelligence agencies, and the other narrative managers of the new cold war, I could no longer rationalize his proximity to the Democratic Party as a necessary strategic move. I had to recognize that I was wrong to view such a decision as acceptable in the first place, and developed beyond my infantile social democratic ideas. That’s how I came to Marxism-Leninism. That, along with my studying how ruling class propaganda misleads us into viewing certain governments as evil.

The essential part of my anti-imperialist education was when I learned to notice atrocity propaganda not just about the socialist countries, but about any given country our government wants us to hate. I became trained to recognize the lies about Russia before I applied the same analytical framework to China, or to north Korea. So when the Ukraine conflict escalated last year, I could easily protect myself from the psyops designed to portray the Russian side as a moral equivalent to the Ukrainian side. It was always obvious to properly informed minds that the Bucha massacre, for one example of these kinds of deceptions, was a Ukrainian false flag.

There’s no comparing Russia’s war tactics to those of the Ukrainians; whereas Russia takes extraordinary care to adhere to the Geneva conventions in its combat, Ukraine tortures its prisoners and has no regard for civilian lives. To act like there’s no right side in this war is to minimize the crimes of a modern fascist state; Ukraine is the one that began an ethnic cleansing campaign against the Russian speakers, and the one whose government has thereby forfeited its right to exist. Russia had an ethical imperative to rescue the communities the fascist coup regime threatened; for that reason, every communist party in the world that hasn’t sold out to imperialism is narratively backing Russia in this conflict.

The explanation for why an element of the left exists that’s pro-Ukraine, or that takes the “neither NATO nor Russia” stance, is the theory of social fascism. Social fascism is the idea the Communist International put forth to make sense of why the reformists on the left had decided to collaborate with the forces of reaction, rather than make an alliance with the revolutionaries. Their conclusion, this being that social democracy is the “moderate wing” of fascism due to its willingness to betray the revolutionary struggle, has been contested over the decades. With the American and European left’s reaction to the Ukraine war, though, it’s become more apparent than ever that the social democrats and the other left anti-Marxists are ultimately on fascism’s side.

What other conclusion can we come to upon hearing Sanders say that he essentially supports what Biden is doing in Ukraine? Or upon seeing AOC vote to fund the Ukrainian Nazi regime, then have to be publicly confronted in order to change her stance? AOC’s apology following the protests wasn’t part of a learning process where she’ll now start to gain anti-imperialist principles, it was only a way to placate those raising these concerns. Besides, the damage was done with that vote, which ensured that the Ukraine aid effort would continue throughout the rest of the time Ukraine remains relevant. When the empire shifts towards its next targets, those being Serbia, all of the BRICs countries, and geopolitical “swing states” like Indonesia and South Africa, AOC and the other “progressive” politicians will assist in the new hybrid warfare efforts. As a consequence of their refusal to challenge the war machine, at worst a third world war will happen, and at best Washington’s ability to inflict global violence will be prolonged.

The crimes the “democratic socialists” have committed against the anti-imperialist cause are what’s taught many developing radicals not to trust any Democrat leaders simply because they call themselves “socialists.” The next step these radicals must take is to learn that we also can’t trust orgs like PSL just because they posit themselves as alternatives to the social fascists. That PSL, FRSO, and CPUSA have disavowed Russia’s action in Ukraine shows they’re not truly willing to challenge social fascism; to do so requires building a version of the socialist movement that’s serious in its anti-imperialism.

To combat U.S. hegemony, we need to narratively assist the global players that are challenging Washington; to praise Russia’s act of defiance against the hegemon is to impact the conflict in a way which harms the USA, because Russia will need to win the information war in order to win the physical war. To disavow the special operation is to narratively assist NATO, because acting like Russia was in the wrong to intervene provides the pro-NATO side with an argument for continuing the aid effort.

These established “left” orgs have also shown themselves to not be reliable anti-imperialist allies by attacking the united front against NATO. They’ve targeted the pro-Russian orgs, not even trying to refute their geopolitical analysis so much as try to discredit their strategy; even though orgs like PCUSA, ASU, and CPI have managed to bring anti-imperialist ideas into the mainstream via their collaboration with non-leftist anti-NATO entities like the Libertarian Party, the left sectarians have portrayed this coalition as an opportunistic one.

If it’s opportunistic, why have its members all willingly put themselves at far greater risk of being targeted by the corporate media and the state than they would be if they were to work alone? Joining up with one another is how they’ve become a substantial threat towards our ruling institutions; to reject this united front strategy is to compromise with the empire.

The mentality of the red libs, in which one becomes willing to handicap their own ability to be counter-hegemonic for the sake of keeping favor within “left” circles, is the same mentality that lets the social democrats rationalize collaborating with the imperialists. The difference is that the social democrats have state power, and therefore are capable of directly contributing to the empire’s crimes. The nominal Marxists who pander to liberal sensibilities out of political expediency are who enable these social fascists. To gain victory for the working class, we have to construct an alternative to both these elements of the imperialism-compatible left.

https://newswiththeory.com/the-american ... ory-right/

Under the circumstances an anti-NATO alliance of convenience is probably necessary. But never forget that the Libertarians are not just "non-leftists', they are viciously anti-communists and would see us all dead. Watch yer back......

Still, their honesty in this is weirdly refreshing compared to the devious crap spewed by that hack Sanders. As is often the case he was proly OK before he won office, after that the drearily predictable 'social democrat syndrome' set in, as usual.
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Re: Ideology

Post by blindpig » Tue Jul 18, 2023 3:22 pm

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Why PSL’s Brian Becker is wrong to oppose multipolarity: it’s an essential step in ending the USA’s global reign of terror

BY RAINER SHEA
JULY 16, 2023

To defeat the state, we in the core of imperialism need to make U.S. hegemony too weakened for our ruling class to be able to use it to hold back revolution. And to cripple the beast by attacking it from within its heart, we need to take away the social base Washington depends on to be able to maintain its global war machine; that social base being the U.S. working class.

The only reason most Americans at the moment accept NATO’s psyops is because they haven’t yet been exposed to the anti-imperialist perspective; should they be given the opportunity to consider that perspective, many of them will react to it not with angry rejection (as the materially comfortable liberals do), but with anger towards their government for all its lies and imperial crimes. As commentator Declan Hayes has observed: “though our initial baby steps away from Biden and the BBC might, at first, seem trivial and of no consequence, when solid masses of us abandon them, their inevitable day of reckoning will hit them all the quicker.” We have the ability to bring most Americans towards anti-imperialism, and to thereby advance the revolutionary struggle.

A “socialism” that opposes serious anti-imperialist practice

The thing that’s so far stopped us from doing this is not the supposed labor-aristocratic character of the American workers—who at this point mostly lack the living standards required for them to be labor aristocrats—it’s the failure of this country’s self-described revolutionaries to do what’s necessary. The three-letter agencies wouldn’t be able to sabotage the USA’s revolutionary organizations so easily if these orgs were to take their job seriously; if they were to stop letting their thinking and practice be influenced by the imperialism-compatible left.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation is the most significant example of this failure at the moment, because it’s an org that’s won the trust of many Marxist-Leninists in large part by putting forth material that counters anti-Chinese propaganda. In order to appeal to liberals, who’ve been brought to an obstinately anti-Russian stance by Russiagate, the PSL has at the same time made an effort to distance itself from Russia; as well as from Russia’s acts of defiance against U.S. hegemony.

With the coming of the Ukraine proxy war, and its prompting of political actors to take sides, the PSL’s Brian Becker has explained why he feels it’s justified from a Marxist perspective for his org to disavow Russia’s special military operation. The rationale he’s put forth, as articulated in his interview with Abby Martin, is that the help Russia has provided with the transition to multipolarity supposedly hasn’t represented a net gain for the class struggle…

Martin: A lot of people are saying that this is good, Brian. Because you have this counterweight officially standing against the U.S., this profound shift is taking place that is going to benefit the world in a positive way that no matter what the outcome here is, that Russia asserting itself on the global stage will inevitably prevent the cataclysmic war that would have happened come Ukraine joined NATO. So…is it good that unipolarity has been challenged?

Becker: I hear all the time people who hate U.S. imperialism and the unipolar world, where the U.S. could try to destroy government after government after government, sanction them, impose draconian economic sanctions so that even if it wasn’t occupying or bombing, they’re still killing the people and ruining whole countries, making their economies scream. People want an option, they’re thinking ‘that’s the unipolar world, what we need is the multipolar world.’…as a Leninist, I think this is a very superficial understanding of world politics…we had a multipolar world all the way up until world war II, what did it bring us? The multipolar world brought us World War I, the multipolar world brought us World War II…if you go back to the Berlin Conference of 1884, all the imperialists sat there, and they took a map of Africa, and they divided it up amongst themselves…the only solution is not multipolarity, the only solution is socialism…in order for that to happen, we have to have independent socialist movements. How can we make radical change in America by saying “Vladimir Putin is our leader?”

Martin: Well said, especially since these forces that are in the multipolar world are also anti-communist.

This is the disgrace to socialist practice and dialectical analysis that happens when American socialists willfully ignore the lesson articulated by Kim Il Sung: “The differences of state socio-political systems, political views or religious beliefs can by no means be an obstacle in the way of joint struggle against U.S. imperialism.”

Becker talks about the need for an independent socialist movement, yet by opposing multipolarity, he’s reinforcing the socialist movement’s dependence on the Democratic Party. The only effect he’s having by taking this stance is to keep his org relegated to liberal circles, without challenging the anti-Russian beliefs that these liberals hold; which renders hollow his calls elsewhere in the interview to expose the warmongering of our government, because such an endeavor can only be successful on the basis of a pro-multipolar practice.

Not only is Becker obscuring the reality that advancing multipolarity is an indispensable step towards reaching socialism; he’s actively hindering the effort to reach socialism. The essence of his argument is that socialism, due to its non-competitive nature, is the only thing which can truly bring peace; yet by letting the perfect (socialism) be the enemy of the good (multipolarity), he’s making that ideal end goal less achievable.

PSL disavows the same multipolar project it’s previously celebrated

To support his argument, Becker also implores us to read the PSL’s book Imperialism in the 21st century: Updating Lenin’s theory a century later, which was partly written by Becker himself. Yet even as Becker implies anti-Washington countries like Russia will inevitably continue the cycle of war which is intrinsic to capitalism in its highest stage (imperialism), this book dispels not just the notion that these countries can be defined as imperialist; but the notion that their intent is to acquire imperialist holdings at any point in the future:

Those who describe the emerging powers in the formerly colonized world as “sub-imperialist” typically do so to suggest that these countries serve to enforce the dictates of the imperialist world order against smaller states, while trying to bring advantages to themselves. But all states that are part of the global capitalist economy are, by very definition, playing a subordinate role and serving as a circuit for the imperialist system, while also seeking to make the most of advantages over their neighbors and competitors. Nearly every state could therefore be described as sub-imperialist or as sub-sub-imperialist (and so on) in relation to another state…Given this general situation, it seems best to describe these as capitalist states emerging inside the shell of imperialism. These newly emerging capitalist powers seek to increase their influence within the system…Many of these states are creating blocs to increase their leverage within the global order. At present, their international goals in general are not to replace the United States as global hegemon, nor to acquire colonial territory, nor to build up a second global economy to rival the first. [Emphasis mine.] Instead, it is to receive a proportionate position in the leading spheres of the global economy, and join the club of developed nations.

Becker and the PSL’s other ideological leaders are fully aware that Washington’s modern geopolitical challengers aren’t imperialist powers, any more than the Soviet Union was; yet they’ve disavowed Russia’s project to weaken U.S. hegemony (and by their logic China’s as well) on the basis that these powers are simply going to repeat the cycle of monopoly capital expansion and war. This narrative of theirs is made all the more dishonest by how the PRC, like the USSR, is a socialist state, and therefore also lacks incentive to become imperialist; that socialist China is the foremost beneficiary of multipolarity, and therefore of anti-hegemonic actions like Russia’s special operation, is the context which they leave out when they make today’s multipolar forces out to be primarily anti-communist in character.

This point alone is enough to shatter Becker and Martin’s arguments; to oppose multipolarity is to oppose the tangible ways multipolarity has already allowed China to undo the legacy of colonialism. By the assessment of one of the PSL’s own resources from 2019, these initiatives by China have not only been lessening the poverty caused by Euro-American imperialism; they’ve been breaking the historical cycles that would otherwise cause the old imperialist powers to be replaced with new ones:

China has led the construction of electric dams in over 10 African countries, recently winning the contract for a major project in Ethiopia…China is also at the forefront of the air connectivity on the continent, funding a range of airports in various countries…In 2018, China and 47 mainly sub-Saharan African nations announced a partnership entitled “10,000 villages” designed to deepen the penetration of satellite television services into the country…China announced this year that it will be covering the vast majority of the costs for Ethiopia’s first satellite, which follows on the heels of a similar deal between China and Nigeria last year to launch two satellites…All of these efforts, of course, bring their share of contradictions. But to call them “colonial” or “neo-colonial” obscures far more than it explains. China’s investments, loans, and grants are aimed against neo-colonial patterns [emphasis mine], and objectively offer many African nations’ opportunities to break total dependence on the Global North, increase their own economic capacities and, by extension, their negotiating position with the West.

These ways that the PSL’s own analyses undermine its arguments for opposing Russia have been made all the more damning by how directly due to the special operation, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has gained further opportunities to expand. As Pepe Escobar wrote this January, it’s apparent from observing Russia and China’s recent diplomatic relationship that the Ukraine conflict has prompted these and other countries to further embrace the BRI. This greater willingness to create an alternative path for the globe also applies to things like the new BRICS currency, which threatens the dollar’s hegemony. That’s what’s apparent from Escobar’s observations:

The year 2022 ended with a Zoom call to end all Zoom calls: Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping discussing all aspects of the Russia-China strategic partnership in an exclusive video call. Putin told Xi how “Russia and China managed to ensure record high growth rates of mutual trade,” meaning “we will be able to reach our target of $200 billion by 2024 ahead of schedule.” On their coordination to “form a just world order based on international law,” Putin emphasized how “we share the same views on the causes, course, and logic of the ongoing transformation of the global geopolitical landscape.” Facing “unprecedented pressure and provocations from the west,” Putin noted how Russia-China are not only defending their own interests “but also all those who stand for a truly democratic world order and the right of countries to freely determine their own destiny.”

To be fair, the interview between Martin and Becker was from February of 2022, so they hadn’t yet been able to see these developments. I say that facetiously though, because anybody who was looking at the global situation honestly could from the start see these things were coming.

And I doubt that what’s since happened will change their stance, even though Putin’s words above are the best possible evidence that Russia isn’t going to suddenly become imperialist once it gets enough power. Socialist China is the one between them with by far the most influence, and this will continue to be true as far as present trends go; therefore even if Russia’s capital were to get strong enough for conquering smaller countries to become in its interests (which likely won’t happen) it would then be held accountable by China. China is capable of ensuring that imperialism no longer menaces the globe after the U.S. empire’s fall, and it’s preemptively doing this by getting Russia to agree to the altruistic goals Putin described.

Russia has committed to helping China build a cooperative world where no country can any longer be invaded, unless it does what Ukraine has done and commit crimes against humanity. The premise of Becker’s argument—this being that the coming era of multipolarity will have the same character as the last one—doesn’t have sufficient evidence. There’s much more evidence against it than for it. What the PSL has done by disavowing multipolarity is effectively go back upon the ideas found within its previous pro-China material, which were clearly pro-multipolar in their effect and maybe even in their intent. PSL hasn’t stopped producing pro-China material, but every time it does, it now comes from a place of being fundamentally opposed to the historical steps necessary for advancing China’s projects to assist the formerly colonized world.

Vilifying anti-imperialist actions from a “socialist” perspective

The big problem getting in the way of us building an effective anti-imperialist movement is that we have prominent figures calling themselves “Leninists,” while actively fighting against the transition to a historical stage that’s a prerequisite to global proletarian victory. Like bourgeois revolutions were at one point worth supporting from a communist perspective, due to these revolutions having at that time been necessary for creating the conditions which make communism realizable, at this moment multipolarity is crucial for communists to support.

Becker implicitly accuses every communist who takes the pro-Russia stance of relying on a bourgeois government for their leadership; a bold accusation to make of the Korean Workers Party, whose foundational Juche ideology is about self-sufficiency in Korea’s revolution. The WPK has praised Russia’s action because this is the correct stance for communists to take, from both an anti-fascist and an anti-imperialist perspective. By putting forth this narrative about the new multipolarity representing a reversion to the old one, Becker seeks to make it seem like he’s justified in opposing the most immediate way to end the U.S. imperial crimes that he starts his answer by talking about. What he’s actually doing is creating a rationale for why we should accept the continuation of these crimes for the time being, since the most immediate alternative to them is supposedly just as bad.

Isn’t this how the NATO apologists talk? They argue that a U.S.-dominated world, with all its horrors, is something we should accept for the sake of “protecting” the world from “rogue states.” These anti-multipolar socialists argue from the same analytical framework, where the ways the multipolar forces are advancing peace and democracy get disregarded in favor of paranoid expectations about them coming to act as global menaces. As the new cold war further escalates, and the left opportunists experience more pressure to appease liberal views of global affairs, they’re going to more and more abandon whatever anti-imperialist ideas they’ve previously put forth. We’re going to see them increasingly reinforce the State Department’s narratives about why a given country is in the wrong for helping weaken U.S. hegemony.

Becker has already begun to do this by minimizing the extent to which Nazism is relevant within Ukraine; with the implication behind this argument being that Operation Z can’t truly be considered a new Great Patriotic War, but a war foremost motivated by profit. To be able to disregard how Putin’s government had to be pressured into taking action by more principled anti-imperialist forces, like Russia’s communists, Becker has to argue that the humanitarian concerns of these forces were exaggerated. Which he does by repudiating the idea (or rather demonstrable reality) that Ukraine is a fascist state. He says: “Unfortunately some people in the west think that all of Ukraine is Nazified, which is not true. That’s not what Ukraine is, that’s not a correct, accurate, objective assessment.”

He says that even though Nazis have been incorporated into the military, in terms of the country’s government, “Ukraine on the main is not Nazi, it’s not a pro-Nazi country, it’s not a pro-fascist country, and in the 2019 parliamentary elections, the political forces that formed the United Right Block, which are the fascist forces, they got about 2.1% of the vote.” This attempt to portray the influence of Nazism in Ukraine as being vastly overstated by the Russian government wasn’t merely a reminder not to overgeneralize about the character of the Ukrainian people; it was about making it look like there was no humanitarian justification for dismantling Ukraine’s military. Since according to Becker and Martin’s narrative, there’s supposedly a sufficient separation between the Nazis in the military and the Ukrainian government itself. Martin makes this clear by saying, with of course no pushback from Becker: “I think it’s important to not reflexively take the PR of a huge capitalist country.”

There’s another indication that the analysis Becker and Martin put forth is not informed by a serious investigation of the situation; it’s a fallacy to act like the geographical size of Russia in itself means Russia is especially inclined to lie about the motives behind its foreign policy decisions. Becker, Martin, and the others within their ideological circle know that Russia is neither an imperialist power, nor has the intent of replacing the U.S. as a global tyrant; their own literature says so. And if their argument is that Russia’s government took the action merely for the benefit of the country’s relatively small capital, why did Putin have to be pressured into it in large part by the communists? Given that Martin blankedly characterizes the multipolar forces as anti-communist in nature, it at least makes sense why she and Becker totally leave out this context within their analysis.

Whitewashing a fascist regime

That’s not their worst lie of omission though; the worst one is where they obscure the reality that Ukraine is a fascist state, a fascist state that was actively attempting to slaughter and ethnically cleanse the Russian-speaking communities in the Donbass directly prior to when Russia’s action saved these communities. Zelensky’s government is the ideological successor to the government the U.S. installed in Ukraine’s 2014 Euromaidan coup, which brought to power a prime minister who declared the separatists to be “subhuman” and a defense minister who articulated a plan for putting the Russian speakers into “filtration” camps before forcibly resettling them across different parts of Ukraine.

Not only were these officials openly dehumanizing entire communities, and announcing intentions to violate their human rights; they were already committing war crimes against these communities, in the form of a continuous campaign of Donbass shelling that led to mass graves. And they were doing this in retaliation for these communities having democratically and constitutionally voted to separate from Ukraine; a mass decision that was carried out due to the coup regime’s open association with Banderism, the ideology of the Nazi collaborators who the regime has regularly celebrated as anti-communist “heroes.”

Like Becker and Martin will recognize the reality of U.S. imperialism’s crimes while opposing the most immediate practical way to end these crimes, they’ll recognize the war crimes of the Ukrainian state while claiming this state’s intent hasn’t been racist or genocidal. Which is what they need to do to support their argument that Russia shouldn’t have taken the only realistic action it could to destroy Banderism’s tools for committing these war crimes. The reality that Ukraine increased the rate of its Donbass shelling by 400% prior to when Russia took action in February of last year shows Kiev had every intent to invade the breakaway region, and to then realize the previous administration’s ethnic cleansing plan.

We know it had this same intent as the last administration because whatever ways Zelensky initially differed from his pro-fascist predecessor, he was soon made to act as a stooge for the Banderist terrorists who truly rule Ukraine. As Max Blumenthal has described this transition in his policies: “Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters ‘I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.’ A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang…By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine.”

Saying Ukraine isn’t a fascist state because its people haven’t voted in fascists is like saying Germany in 1933 wasn’t a fascist state because the Nazi Party hadn’t been democratically elected into power. Hitler didn’t need to be elected, he was able to be installed by the country’s bourgeoisie as part of a project to manage capitalism’s crises. Ukraine’s oligarchs have backed the U.S. empire’s installation and maintenance of a fascist shadow government because fascism is capitalism’s tool for fortifying itself against potential threats. Threats like class struggle that could arise within Ukraine, due to the country’s extreme post-Soviet corporate looting and neoliberal shock therapy.

This is the essence of why Ukraine is a fascist state: fascism isn’t an ideology, it’s a practice, a practice where the bourgeoisie implement measures to stop the existing socioeconomic order from being overthrown. We see this in Ukraine’s laws banning the use of Russian in public life; in how the government-backed fascist militias have normalized violence against those the state considers to be undesirables; in Ukraine’s criminalization of speech that talks about the crimes of the country’s Nazi collaborators; in the atrocities committed by Ukraine’s national guard; in Zelensky’s project to make Ukraine into a “big Israel,” where this same national guard gets incorporated into daily life; in Zelensky’s banning of opposition parties, following when the communist party became the first one to be banned shortly after the coup; in the government’s calls for the murder of the Kononovitch brothers in retaliation for their organizing a communist youth movement. These things are proof on their own that Ukraine is fascist.

If Becker wanted to, he could use the topic of Ukraine to teach a quite valuable lesson about the nature of fascism as it relates to class war. He doesn’t want to though, because he prefers to go with whatever narratives will make PSL more appealing to liberals. Which in this case is the narrative that Russia isn’t justified in demilitarizing a modern fascist state.

The Ukraine conflict has prompted the PSL to reveal itself as willing to contradict correct parts from its own literature; to try to narratively sabotage actions that represent the most immediately practical ways of ending U.S. imperialism’s crimes; to discard the historical materialist principle that reaching Marxism’s ideal end goal is only possible after taking the necessary steps; to whitewash the actions and beliefs of fascists; to discard the geopolitical perspectives of communist parties that are actually in power, and that have valuable things to teach us; to smear forces that are primarily communist in nature as anti-communist. It’s willing to do these things all for the sake of recruiting a few thousand more liberals. Such a party is not capable of winning the class struggle, as it’s divorced itself from what’s in the interests of the people. It’s only capable of winning over a niche of liberalsm who are open to Marxism, as long as it’s a “Marxism” that doesn’t challenge their pro-imperialist beliefs.

https://newswiththeory.com/why-psls-bri ... of-terror/

That this Becker guy's arguments and logic are so weak does not speak well for PSL

Anybody with an inkling of history understands that a return to multipolarity has it's dangers but given our situation must be necessary step away from hegemony. And there's a new sheriff in Hong Kong...

As for PSL's apparent desire to attract liberals, well, that's class for ya.

Never liked that Martin woman anyways...she'll be on CBS one day.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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