tpaine posted:

oi, ai seund loike a valleh gehl

Get_A_Job posted:

Really, I'll give you a chance. Convince me communism works. I see the US standing tall and China following suit by adopting free-trade, capitalist-friendly policies. Meanwhile, the Soviets are thrashing and the Cubans are starving. Even Venezuala is waking up to the scam that is socialism.

gyrofry posted:

getfiscal posted:
well you have to include partial successes and a wider range of countries if you want a fair picture. like venezuela isn't a socialist country but i wouldn't say that electoralism or whatever has been a complete failure in that country.
wouldn't you say that the possibility of electoral bolivarianism in venezuela was created by the general cultural current of militant leftism in latin america? like isn't chavez in some way riding the coattails of his predecessors (not necessarily in venezuela) who did not proceed through the electoral route? and weren't those predecessors in turn enabled and supported by the covert resources of large communist nation-states?

yea but it is still electoralism its just that like all revolutionary methods the mechanics are semi irrelevant compared to the social reality that they exist in and are produced by and the ability of forces in the struggle to match them

a left-wing deviation in the case of guerilla strategies, which are sometimes adopted by forces affected by subjectivism in order to avoid doing the work required to root themselves in the class.

gotta watch out for that

#11 The Strategy of Protracted Revolutionary Warfare seems most relevant today as many countries are deruralizing. Leninist-Komintern insurrection is extremely risky for the vanguard and could wipe out the leadership in a very short period of time by presenting a fixed target.

getfiscal posted:

there's a relatively new book out that praises FARC-EP and basically says everything the media tells you about it is a lie. which made me sort of laugh but part of me thinks it's probably a good book because everything the media tells me about most things is a lie.

when the media tells you to shower regularly it might have a point tho. just a thought

Crow posted:

FARC is good. its not news its FARC, what i always say. I also always say FARC off. So what do you want from me?

babyhueypnewton posted:

for example, i'm fascinated with the history of malaysian communism and why it failed. It's one of the most important examples of the interaction between race and class and how a communist party can succeed in highly racially segregated conditions. I know next to nothing, just what i picked up from like 2 weeks spent there and then reading a bit afterwards. but you'll find very few marxists in the west who even know malaysian communism was a thing. either you'll get complete ignorance or the typical "stalinist state capitalist peasants buzzwords".

do you know of any good books on this?

d4ky posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:for example, i'm fascinated with the history of malaysian communism and why it failed. It's one of the most important examples of the interaction between race and class and how a communist party can succeed in highly racially segregated conditions. I know next to nothing, just what i picked up from like 2 weeks spent there and then reading a bit afterwards. but you'll find very few marxists in the west who even know malaysian communism was a thing. either you'll get complete ignorance or the typical "stalinist state capitalist peasants buzzwords".

do you know of any good books on this?

Someone in the what are you reading thread here recommended The Jungle Is Neutral, which is an amazing first-hand account of the conditions of WWII Malaysia. He actually went native with communist guerillas who at the time were instrumental in fighting the Japanese (he was one of like 6 British citizens left in country after they had to quickly evacuate when the Japanese took the Malay Peninsula). Later the same Communists, though sponsored to give back their guns, were successfully fended off by the British cutting off their support by the villagers. This is literally where Hearts & Minds comes from because it was studied as one of the first successful counter-insurgencies (and first insurgencies).

It doesn't cover the postwar period very much and the worldview is obviously pro-British-imperialism, but that makes it easier to see the ideology actually. There are probably detailed military books about the resistance itself... but this provides the backstory and also is fun as hell to read.