The left's main vulnerability is splitting and infighting. We are terrible at it. This is known.
To build revolutionary change, a revolutionary party is needed. It must do its work and carry on its work. In the military, they taught me that the number one priority is preserving your ability to fight. It's ok if you have setbacks, lose equipment or men or tactical position or advantage; but it's a catastrophe if you lose the capacity to fight.
Leftist infighting is what robs the movement of its ability to fight on. It kills the movements. (The Buddhists know this, and consider 'creating a schism in the sangha' the supreme sin. That's a tangent, but the Buddhists have maintained an ideological movement for 26 centuries so they're doing something right.)
We need to mock people who shame other leftists for impurity, who insult them for making mistakes. Liu Shaoqi said: "The attitude of some Party members towards these shortcomings and mistakes and towards those comrades who have incorrect ideas is one of “bitter hatred and gall”. They lightly sever all relations with comrades who have committed some mistake and whom they attempt to expel from the Party outright."
It is ok for comrades to make mistakes in action, and to have mistaken beliefs. That's the completely normal, inevitable part of having a movement. In fact, that's all a movement is: listening to people's beliefs, listening to their wrong beliefs, correcting them, unifying the thought of the party, unity makes strength. It is not ok to have incorrect ideas of “bitter hatred and gall”, and lightly sever all relations with comrades who have committed some mistake.
MAO MADE 30% MISTAKES, INCLUDING CAUSING THE BIGGEST FAMINE IN HUMAN HISTORY!!! If you can forgive that, you can forgive someone who made an off-colour tweet when they were a teenager.
People who try to cancel comrades for stuff they did/said in the distant past, or for non-core differences of opinion, are dong the imperialists work for them: dismantling the socialist movement.
PS: the aim is always to have a cohesive, united, strong movement with the correct views. Anything that serves the aim is good. Anything that wrecks the aim is bad.
I agree. We anarchists and communists need to get along. We have the very similar end goals and all know that the bigger enemy is the current system.
I don't trust any anarchist that hates communists and I don't trust any communist that hates anarchists. Simple as.
Marx's corpse just started to twitch
Marx lived like a borderline crust punk.
Genuinely asking is this a dig at what dickey said? And why?
At least from what I know of Marx, he would've accepted allies in his cause where he could find them. Correct me if I'm wrong.
To me, the reality of western leftism does not give us the privilege to pick and choose our allies as we see fit.
Look up the first international and why it split. Basically Marx is known for criticizing works just as much as writing them. I'm pretty sure "On Authority" is about him shit talking anarchists and what would come to be succdems, haven't read it in awhile.
On Authority is Engels, not Marx
Neat, that does seem to be the case. I know Marx yells about this too but it is probably something else.
My beautiful boy Freddy keeps getting ignored smh my head
Shit that's good
Exactly! I'm more MLM leaning, but I don't care what left tendency prevails so long as capitalism dies and stays dead. Anarchism and authoritarian left measures all have their place in different given material conditions. I think both avenues of pressure on the system are good. The Soviet revolution had different wings of the movement with different methods, all focused on specific pressure points of the system.