https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/24/opinions/white-helmets-deserve-rescue-lemmon-opinion/index.html
That the Syrian regime called their rescue a "criminal operation" should surprise few and confuse even fewer.
well no argument there
short interview with Torkil Lauesen
reminds me that i formatted the intro that he and Zak Cope wrote for the Kersplebedeb reissue of the CWC compilation, "Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: On Colonies, Industrial Monopoly and the Working Class Movement"
i'll drop that over here, since that thread already has a bunch of Cope stuff
Edited by Constantignoble ()
https://theleftwind.wordpress.com/2018/03/02/winter-palace/
some of the most salient bits are in the "practice" and "the sect system" sections.
More and more communists are being educated through the internet, whether that be through Twitter or marxists.org. While having centuries of communist thought at one’s fingertips is no doubt a progressive development, this style of education, disconnected from practice, can have a negative effect on political education. Internet communists learn Leninism as a set of “positions” on historical and modern events, or at worst, a set of dogmas and truisms. Then, new “converts” to MLism (or any other tendency) seek an “affinity group” (almost like a hobby club), and naturally look to WWP, PSL, and FRSO due to their “positions”. Strategy and tactics are rarely brought up in online communities, if at all; it is enough that they have the “correct line” on whether this or that country is socialist, or which forces are deserving of our support in certain conflicts, etc. It is taken as a given that joining the organization with the most similar positions as one’s own is the correct strategic move.
What is today understood as MLism contains many analyses from its component parts (Marcyism, MZT) which are in tension with MLs’ self-image as representative of the global communist tradition It is mistaken for the ML trend in the U.S. to view itself as cut from the exact same cloth as current or historical self-described Marxist-Leninist parties across the world for purely ideological reasons. Despite the fact that U.S. MLs “uphold” the Cuban Communist Party, or Mao Zedong’s contributions, or the FARC, or the PFLP, it does not follow that U.S. MLs are a part of a united tradition with all of these groups7. As materialists, we must recognize that an organization or trend must be appraised by its practice, not by its own words or ideology. One cannot simply “identify with” a swath of historical Parties and inherit their success and credentials. We believe this trend of appealing to the authority of other movements and parties is an important way that U.S. MLism seeks to legitimize itself while concealing its actual history and practice.
In practice, our WWP branch’s work was entirely centered around attending and/or organizing street protests. We would show up at whatever demonstrations were going on, or sometimes we would hold our own. We would bring our own signs that expressed our own slogans, and on bad days we would show up with just the “usuals” (i.e. already-politicized ‘activists’). When demonstrations had a more mass character, it was usually because the news caught the attention of large layers of the class. In those cases, we would hand out as many newspapers as possible, with the vague goal of “recruiting” new members. We considered this approach justified, criticizing other activist groups as “weak on anti-racism/anti-imperialism” or “opportunist” for not organizing a 10-person demonstration in solidarity with Maduro.
To be absolutely clear, we did not only protest. We also held sign-making parties, planning meetings, educational panels/discussions, jail support etc. However, most of this work was supplementary and revolved around our focus on protesting. We would sometimes jump from issue to issue, but we would often focus our time organizing demonstrations with a small handful of particular groups. The only measurable goal was recruiting new members, not organizing the class or winning concrete reforms.
While groups like the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and Socialist Alternative on the one hand and the PSL and WWP on the other have very different political positions, we believe their similarities outweigh their differences. Both sets of groups focus a great deal of energy on “activist culture” and building their sect, while what separates them foremost is their signage at demonstrations and their newspapers9. What’s more important, in our evaluation, is the ways in which groups engage with and organize the class in order to build working-class institutional power. In that sense, the ISO, WWP, RCP, etc. are united in their status as sects rather than genuine mass organizations.
toutvabien posted:
i finished reading this after countless recommendations and for all the commieboners parenti gets he's so unilaterally shit on stalin-era ussr
started with the polemic between the cpc and the cpsu of 1963-64 today and its hella good
The idea that these structural questions are a matter of tactics or strategy is so absurd to me. Not only because every party's strategy is a mishmash of whatever has worked in the past but because the self-admitted weakness of proposed solutions never actually causes the author to reflect that the problem may be deeper. They even admit that actual revolutions rarely follow a set plan But use that to justify opportunism and eclectic theorizing. Just look at the comments, where various parasites promote "left communism" and its Maoist form. But the left is full of opportunists who want to jump ahead in the line and get more influence than they would in an established party, obviously that's going to happen through the same internet the authors complain about. In practice, this faux neutrality about line is an excuse to subordinate line to reformism and white supremacy:
https://medium.com/@sophia.burns/summation-of-the-experience-of-the-greater-seattle-neighborhood-action-coalition-gsnac-7eb6bd4208b1
From one of the authors of that blog. They literally have to relearn Leninism from scratch because they started out from that blogpost.
https://theleftwind.wordpress.com/2018/05/13/the-us-left-has-only-four-tendencies/
Is either a sign that the people writing have never actually been involved with the left where practically speaking this is what communists do most of the time or extreme dishonesty to justify working with
Notable examples: the Marxist Center network; Cooperation Jackson; Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation; many parts of the IWW; DSA Praxis; much of DSA Refoundation.
Look at that blog. After all the complaining about dogmatism, this is the suggestion
While we should study and learn from Leninism, we should also study other trends: autonomism & operaismo, Marxist-feminism, pre-war social democracy, and all historical anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and feminist movements.
A combination of reformism, anarchism, and generic identity politics as a preemptive defense. This isn't abstract either, as the medium article shows the practice that's being advocated is subordinate to anarchists and eventually liberals by design
The guide contains several thousand pages of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and one text by each Stalin and Mao. Not only does it exclude other Marxists from the era such as Gramsci, Luxemburg, and Lukács, but it also excludes more contemporary thinkers like Samir Amin or Etienne Balibar.
Amin is basically a reformist while Balibar is a full blown reactionary. But think about talking nonstop about dogmatism and idealism and the irrelevance of the 20th century these are the best thinkers you could come up with. Honestly the DSA and the potential for advancement within it will create many more opportunists like this, it's only gonna get worse. Engagement with imperialism and labor aristocracy is so much more productive but of course that's not gonna get you many supporters on patreon or even elected. This isn't just about anarchists though, I think that blogger moufawad and the type of politics he represents are identical despite superficial engagement with Maoism and even settlers/labor aristocracy and that tendency is the majority of internet politics and has a pernicious effect on actual politics. My experience is it has to be unlearned and most young people who try to join a party come in with that approach. Though obviously there are structural reasons, I don't expect white student youth to be disciplined and humble.
Edited by babyhueypnewton ()
elias posted:a pretty good blog post about that thing USians call Marxism-Leninism.
https://theleftwind.wordpress.com/2018/03/02/winter-palace/
this has been exactly my experience in a ML party, thanks 4 posting friend
mayakovfefe posted:from my experience with the local frso chapter in my town their characterization is completely off. they do good work around protecting the local communities from border patrol and ice and are involved in union politics and aren't particularly dogmatic. they seem really normal tbh. they've seemed to hit a brick wall where they cant outmaneuver the local democratic party around pretty key issues but that isnt because they haven't been "base building"
to be fair the blogger does seem to differentiate frso from the marcyite parties:
In practice, it does seem that FRSO is more concerned with base-building than WWP in that their cadre focus on specific areas of work, dedicating their time and energy into certain mass struggles instead of jumping around to different protests. They have many members in unions, national liberation struggles, the student movement, and other areas. We see this as an improvement of the protest-centric model practiced by WWP. However, we still have hesitations about FRSO’s organizational structure, which we will discuss later.
where they get lumped into the discussion of u.s. ml-ism its mostly to account for the ncm lineages and influences present within it, and to critique the specific interpretation of democratic centralism they have in common.
We also think that Marxists can work productively in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). While the DSA was founded on the principles of Zionism and Democratic Party lobbyism, and to this day maintains a conservative old guard, we believe that the recent influx in membership upon the election of Trump has destabilized the old leadership and given the organization a more “massy” character, which may provide Marxists with the opportunity to expose new socialists to our ideas and methods of work.
Okay well good luck, to them, with that. I'm pretty sure that most members of DSA will always be anti-communist, and that's one of the reasons DSA exists. Why some people think they have to seize control of part of DSA for socialism to benefit from what its increased membership represents, I just don't understand.
Edited by tears ()
tears posted:some of the more maoist(?) posters (rip bomper gomper)
Hello.
anyway, the marxist centrists are pretty accurate in their criticisms of basically every ML group in this country. i'd go further to say that the devotion to the standard marxist-leninist doctrine is so pervasive yet restrictive, from a logistical and technical standpoint, that both of the big parties are essentially crippled by it. activist culture is a drain on energy and resources; the deliberation of every decision, from top to bottom, and coupled with the lack of resources (most of which goes to bail money) and lack of authority to carry them out quickly, is a monstrous waste of time; the potential for secrecy, reciprocity, and discipline that the whole political form is supposed to generate is easily squandered by shitty personalities, poor internal infrastructure, and a complete absence of internal intellectual life. essentially, the whole party-form inherited by orgs like the FSRO, WWP, and PSL is a product of a movement that proscribed itself to exclusively aboveground, legal political work decades ago and, realistically, can't transcend that. it doesn't help that the leadership is very old and only younger members have a working knowledge of op/infosec, but not a whole lot.
the political "left" is completely exogenous to the productive lives of the working classes at this point: either being alienated from them for various reasons or outmaneuvered by the bourgeois parties and the demoralization and depoliticization they tend to leave in their wake. while community work goes a long way in providing people with a sense of solidarity and cooperation, it's mainly an attempt to bridge social gaps created by precaritization and doesn't really figure into political action at the moment (the MXGM and cooperation jackson have already run into this).
trying to consolidate a "revolutionary socialist" pole and radicalize the DSA, for instance, is a complete waste of time. the organization, its programs, history, and anti-communism extend beyond the potential revolutionary activity of its younger rank-and-file members; they're completely at the mercy of its past, its politics, and its structure. the same is pretty much true for orgs like the IWW, which realistically can't break from its syndicalism (or, for that matter, away from the fact that some of their chapters are essentially social clubs).
i think the reasonable political response to this would be to go further underground and develop more disciplined, centralized cells connected to bodies of working social organizations in working class neighborhoods. like what the RGs are essentially attempting to do, except without the sacrificial drift towards civil war. no one has to put candidates up for election, no one has to be accountable to petit-bourgeois students, and no one has to court the goodwill of organizations burdened with the worthless sentimentality they attach to their supposed historical depth and importance. once it's demonstrated that any amount of political power can be seized directly from the state or capital, that any revolutionary force can make a single political gain and own it, then it'd be necessary to consolidate a political bloc. but not before.
Edited by red_dread ()
e: like, real talk, what's stopping marxist organizers from trying to form a party alongside say radical uaw syndicalists
belgend posted:e: like, real talk, what's stopping marxist organizers from trying to form a party alongside say radical uaw syndicalists
nothing from an ideological standpoint but what would a party composed of marxist organizers and radical uaw syndicalists do? that's a practical question.
what forms and actions would it have to take in order to function as a genuinely revolutionary party? what links could it develop and maintain on the job and in the street? where does its funds come from and who/what do they sustain?
red_dread posted:what forms and actions would it have to take in order to function as a genuinely revolutionary party?
well i think you said it yourself in your first post itt, you must have a centralized structure, in its early stages being a cell connected to one sector or struggle who should have as its task to lead this struggle and to find a message that brings the other people involved in this struggle or sector one step closer to the understanding that socialism is necessary. i think in its nascent formation you need one or several cells, a coordinatory organism and a direction
red_dread posted:what links could it develop and maintain on the job and in the street?
hmm yeah what links could union workers develop on their job, extremely good questions from the theoryboi, you seem to be underestimating the potential networks of these people, they don't start from 0
red_dread posted:where does its funds come from and who/what do they sustain?
you ask for membership fees? i mean, in your early stages you're probably just gonna be like copying pamphlets or whatever.
and like, for the question of what this party-under-construction would do??? it's pretty obvious no? show the working class through concrete examples that your party is the party in the area that will lead and win your struggles. i realize it's all more difficult than this and i'm very much generalizing but you make it seem like a party needs to have this insane amount of theoretical baggage. like the cadres should obviously have a grasp on ml that goes beyond saying socialism is the capitalist state but theory comes from practice
belgend posted:hmm yeah what links could union workers develop on their job, extremely good questions from the theoryboi, you seem to be underestimating the potential networks of these people, they don't start from 0
i'm living in the south, where industrial labor is extremely marginal outside of isolated agricultural sectors, disorganized, and very heavily stratified between latinxs, settlers, and pacific islanders. there's also a heavily exploited stratum of food processing workers, who are heavily surveilled by both management and ICE. in the case of the service sector, walmart is probably the single biggest employer and has actually managed to close entire facilities when management gets any word that workers are combining at all. the few attempts to organize workers in the region have been pretty quickly swept aside or buried under rampant corruption in a nearby NGO. the networks rarely seem to develop outside of families or extended families.
you ask for membership fees? i mean, in your early stages you're probably just gonna be like copying pamphlets or whatever.
hypothetically, with union workers, yeah. with precarious and heavily exploited workers, who in my experience have held the most advanced ideas and shown the most willingness to offer support and help with organizational work, not really. if anything, any revolutionary organization would need to be in a position to help them, at least in part.
and like, for the question of what this party-under-construction would do??? it's pretty obvious no? show the working class through concrete examples that your party is the party in the area that will lead and win your struggles. i realize it's all more difficult than this and i'm very much generalizing but you make it seem like a party needs to have this insane amount of theoretical baggage. like the cadres should obviously have a grasp on ml that goes beyond saying socialism is the capitalist state but theory comes from practice
so maybe this is just my own bad experiences with marxist groups in general but the vast majority of cadres i've met are more interested in the browbeating, leftbook-harangueing type bullshit. cadres rarely act, speak, or relate to anyone like human beings in their political work. also, they really like yelling at women.
Edited by red_dread ()
red_dread posted:so maybe this is just my own bad experiences with marxist groups in general but the vast majority of cadres i've met are more interested in the browbeating, leftbook-harangueing type bullshit. cadres rarely act, speak, or relate to anyone like human beings in their political work. also, they really like yelling at women.
red_dread posted:any revolutionary organization would need to be in a position to help them, at least in part.
hi "read_dread", anyway i was wondering what your thoghts are on the risk of just doing red charity work and what the difference between the two would be/are from your experience;
edit: also because in my experience this is what MLs tend to assume you mean when you suggest actually helping people
Edited by tears ()
tears posted:red_dread posted:
any revolutionary organization would need to be in a position to help them, at least in part.
hi "read_dread", anyway i was wondering what your thoghts are on the risk of just doing red charity work and what the difference between the two would be/are from your experience;
edit: also because in my experience this is what MLs tend to assume you mean when you suggest actually helping people
Edited by tears (today 11:08:42)
you’ve read mcg’s Three Documents right? probably. but they describe realizing that their support work (transporting people to visit family members in prison iirc) was completely apolitical in the fashion they were carrying it out and label it red ngoism
https://maoistcommunistgroup.com/2015/06/06/three-documents-of-the-maoist-communist-group/
red_dread posted:squandered by shitty personalities, poor internal infrastructure, and a complete absence of internal intellectual life.
these things of course are completely intertwined. trying to build better abstract infrastructure (policies, best practices, task scheduling, concrete divisions of labour,) which you need if you want to maintain physical infrastructure, into a radical org is a maddening endeavor because the old cranky badass who's been doing everything themselves for years will fight tooth and nail to keep being the structural linchpin even when that clearly is limiting the org's ability to get anything done, and they will harangue and push out anyone who threatens their personal power.
also, they really like yelling at women.
it's much more than that ime. male ml's will make token references to women's liberation, i once listened to a psl speaker give a whole presentation about what psl stands for only to mention womens liberation at the very end as a "we also care about women i guess", while openly treating women communists with disdain or opportunistically trying to keep advantage of them. they will talk big talk about caliban and the witch but reject the theory of the sexual division of labor that c&w is trying to demonstrate. very little effort is done to prevent the reproduction of the sexual division of labor in their own org and the women just become the house and sex workers for the org and ofc they eventually quit. this is well known but inexplicably seen as unavoidable amongst most ml's i speak to
elias posted:you’ve read mcg’s Three Documents right? probably. but they describe realizing that their support work (transporting people to visit family members in prison iirc) was completely apolitical in the fashion they were carrying it out and label it red ngoism
https://maoistcommunistgroup.com/2015/06/06/three-documents-of-the-maoist-communist-group/
...this writing style, but i will persevere
Every single strategy and tactic has been tried over the century of American communism. Saying "what if the Leninist party model doesn't work in the West" isn't some brilliant innovation, it's the entire story of the new left and eventually eurocommunism and post-Marxism. Fusing it with Sakai doesn't change the reactionary nature of it as I already pointed out, Sakai himself is easily absorbed into the worst kind of anarchist and lumpen politics (and don't give me shit about the lumpen being the true revolutionary subject, that's been tried too).
The limits on the party are structural, reducing them to chauvanism by white men or power grabbing old codgers who think of themselves as Lenin is both shallow and slanderous. If you're going to accept third worldism actually accept it, the strength of the PSL is its international relations and position on imperialism. This is fused with a certain kind of labor aristocratic reformism imo but has almost no influence on the party since it functions in the way people have already pointed out: going to other people's protests and promoting its own line or having individuals in the party and positions of influence. That's not a weakness, that's a strength because that's how anti-imperialist politics has to function in the center of the empire while actual fusion with the organized worker's movements has always led to reformism and labor aristocracy.
babyhueypnewton posted:My experience has been the opposite.... I have my own thoughts on the limitations of the party but the longer I'm involved the more I feel like people are just talking out of their ass honestly and caught up in online pessimism.
yeah
babyhueypnewton posted:getting into back and forth about the representation of women and POC only leads to pessimism and ultraleftism, particularly since so much of this stuff happens internally, which makes things look worse when were used to the public callout culture that the "red guards" and others love so much.
this sounds super defensive and dismissive af but thats none of my business *kermit_drink_a_tea.jpeg*
babyhueypnewton posted:getting into back and forth about the representation of women and POC only leads to pessimism and ultraleftism,
i take your point about internal discussion but I don’t think that attitude is Very Pissle. Imho.
babyhueypnewton posted:If you're going to accept third worldism actually accept it, the strength of the PSL is its international relations and position on imperialism... that's how anti-imperialist politics has to function in the center of the empire while actual fusion with the organized worker's movements has always led to reformism and labor aristocracy.
how do you discuss that with other PSL members, though? i feel like your perspective here is radically different than the marcyite stuff they put in their program. i had guessed that if you said you were deeply skeptical of labour activism that you'd get some strange looks. in any case i don't know what 'function' means here, it seems like RAIM-like goals of just keeping your sanity in an imperialist country by stating the obvious, more than a set of concrete tasks that you hope to achieve. like how would you know if your policy at a particular protest had achieved some benchmark?
getfiscal posted:babyhueypnewton posted:If you're going to accept third worldism actually accept it, the strength of the PSL is its international relations and position on imperialism... that's how anti-imperialist politics has to function in the center of the empire while actual fusion with the organized worker's movements has always led to reformism and labor aristocracy.
how do you discuss that with other PSL members, though? i feel like your perspective here is radically different than the marcyite stuff they put in their program. i had guessed that if you said you were deeply skeptical of labour activism that you'd get some strange looks. in any case i don't know what 'function' means here, it seems like RAIM-like goals of just keeping your sanity in an imperialist country by stating the obvious, more than a set of concrete tasks that you hope to achieve. like how would you know if your policy at a particular protest had achieved some benchmark?
I'm not really sure what you expect. Whether a policy has a concrete effect isn't something that can be determined in the abstract, only in practice. For years, decades even South Korean labor activists and socialists attempted to connect with the American left (particularly the progressive Korean American community) with very little to show for it. All of a sudden South Korea has a political revolution and many things are possible if the left continues to pressure the bourgeois left-nationalists in power. Suddenly all that work over decades looks really important, and if you were involved you would know the only ones who have been there are PSL. We have broad lines for what we should be oriented towards, like imperialism is the primary contradiction and resistance to imperialism is the area where a small first world left can have a large influence.
Like we had a post a few weeks ago about North Korea having relations with some crazy backwoods Juche club which became a cult and this was supposed to be evidence that North Korea was revisionist or whatever. In fact it showed the opposite, even a socialist country is so desperate for international support that they will turn to a few people in a shed because that's all there is. That stuff matters to me and I can openly discuss it with party members without having to justify it along Marcyist lines, I think you're confused about how the party (or any party) actually functions in a period of growth.
Having said that you're not wrong about some differences between what I'm saying and the party line, as I spend more time in the party I'll bring up these issues and try to convince people without it causing me some existential crisis about Marxism-Leninism or whatever. If my line doesn't win out I'll follow the party line and if I can't stand it I'll leave, I'm not so important as to cause a theory to need reevaluation.
it's a discussion of marx's methodology, presented as a critique of the analytic marxists (taking aim at g.a. cohen as the principal), that focuses mainly on the concepts of the productive forces, relations of production, and superstructure. so, it's a tad niche for a general-audience recommendation, but if you've grappled with any of those concepts it's definitely worth a read