Because I feel like I'm in one.
I believed in the necessity of a vanguard party for a long time, but...material conditions. If there were a well-defined leader—even of something like the protests in PDX—they would have already been imprisoned on trumped up charges or Fred Hampton'd. Likely the former at this time. Historical evidence suggests this is the case, as do present conditions. Based on how brutally we're seeing the police treat anonymous members of the antifascist resistance, it's getting really hard to imagine how it could be possible to have anything remotely resembling a leader, or even a party with a membership list and regular meetings.
I understand the implications the lack of a central organizing structure has on our ability to effectively resist the state, but because of how everything has played out so far it seems like this might...actually be working in our favor. At least, considering what's unfolded up to the present moment I have a hard time picturing it going better if we had defined leadership that the state was able to target right out of the gate.
There's also the fact that (at least I'm ready to concede this at this point) that the US in its entirety isn't going to undergo a socialist revolution backed by the masses, and that the most likely scenario heading in that direction is a balkanization with the emergence of something better as one of its fragments (most likely west coast/PNW). Such a something better would be more likely to (successfully) take the from of an autonomous region similar to Chiapas or Rojava, versus a traditional socialist state amidst a sea of late/post-war capitalism.
Finally, another thought regarding material conditions...who are the people out there at this very moment resisting the state? It's anarchists. No one, myself included, is effectively organizing any type of meaningful ML resistance to meet this moment, but there are folks out in the street fighting cops every single night. They are the ones doing the work, and all we can say about it is "hmm, sure looks like we are approaching revolutionary conditions". But...it's other folks doing the work, and we're sitting around hoping to cash in on it later.
I'm getting ready to jump ship.
All these leftist tendencies, I just wanna grill for God’s sake!
But in all seriousness, a socialist revolution in the imperial core will require a synthesis of ML/Maoist and anarchist tendencies. No one ideology will bring us to the revolution, it simply does not fit the material conditions and is unscientific. IMO, the movement will require spontaneity and mass coordination that is more suited to anarchism so as to disorient the state and build popular support, but will also require parts of the party/vanguard structure from ML/MLM to direct that energy into building dual power that delegitimizes the state and solidifies socialist power in the long term. As to HOW that is accomplished is up to us to figure out. The establishment must win every time, but we must only win once. And the contradictions of capitalism draw closer and closer together. The struggle carries on, comrade. We must work with leftists (but not fucking liberals) of all stripes to synthesize the revolution that will take down the beast from the inside. May the workers give us the strength.
TL,DR: Leftist Unity🥺👉👈😘
The establishment must win every time, but we must only win once.
I mostly agree with everything you said except that part. Any dominant structure (whether it is stateless or not, it really doesn't matter), only lasts as long as it is "winning". Saying we only need to win once kinds of imply that this victory couldn't be co-opted or re appropriated by revisionists and opportunists. There is no such thing as "one final victory".
Fair point. In theory, so long as the revolutionaries and their ideological descendants work to better the material conditions of the working class, then socialism will only need to win “the big fight” once. Of course, any governmental system can be thrown into peril via natural disaster (hello climate change!), failing economies, or by any other declination of the material conditions that allows other ideologies to rise. Hopefully, by the nature of socialism’s prioritizing of the working class, then the administrators of it (or perhaps lack thereof) will imbue that prioritization in decision making to ensure that the masses are cared for. That will be up to the post revolutionary society to figure out, how to “defend” the revolution, from reactionaries, corruption, and overly complicated bureaucracy that prevents meaningful working class improvement. Let us hope that whoever does bring about the revolution recognizes your valid point in addition to the revolutionary situation
I've always wondered how a possible revolutionary movement in the US would be integrated with Native American struggles. Are most tribes "revolutionary" in any way? I would assume a revolutionary communist group thats based in a reservation would be much harder to infiltrate, spy on, and dismantle by the us gov no?
I couldn’t say whether most tribes were revolutionary or not. There is certainly revolutionary potential. However, there is a not insignificant part of Indigineous people that do not consider Marxism a path to freedom. I forgot the name of the guy, perhaps someone can help me out, but basically he was a Lakota who made a speech in the 80’s about how Marxism would not free the Lakota at all. Essentially, he said it was in the vein of other “European” ideologies, exploiting the earth for the sake of “progress” instead of “profit.” While I didn’t agree with all his points, there is certainly a point in how sustainability and spiritual communalism is valued among Indigenous people, and how any society that comes post capitalism must come to value those things not only to gain support from the Indigineous, but for the betterment of all the working class.
This is why I still tend to consider myself an anarchist. I think it comes down to a matter of priority. I'm cynical as fuck and of the mind that we need a clean slate, which leads me to prioritize the destruction of the state, especially since living in the imperial core I feel that is the most important thing for international socialist movements. Anything that can be done to dismantle the existing federal government is a net good, even if actual revolution in this country would result in a lot of suffering, it would also reduce so much more harm than it would cause and that harm would be inflicted on those benefiting from our hegemony.
Disclaimer I don't want any of those bad things to happen, I just feel this is what we have come to.
Has there ever been a similar sort of revolution in a global empire before that led to its destruction? Or has it always been like cause of wars?
I don't think any direct parallel can really be drawn to the current state of world politics. If the US falls (which I believe to be necessary to the advancement of international leftist movements) it's going to be due to internal strife. Given the current political landscape in the US any effective leftist response to this is going to have to be decentralized as well as insurrectionary.
You're looking at protests happening right now (which have achieved very little other than discourse) which happen all the time everywhere as proof that creating a party structure and state apparatus to resist counter-revolution is unnecessary and bad? The protests are good and everyone supports them but protests aren't a form of political change or revolutionary action (unless you're backed by the CIA or other state entity).
Well what has been accomplished by anyone on the left in this country lately? You're saying the protests create discourse like that's...a bad thing? And I didn't say that party structure was "unnecessary and bad", I specifically said I understand the implications of not having one and agree that it would be better, but that I don't see any way to effectively do that in our current conditions. I feel like you only read the first sentence of my post.
I don't think there's been any country where suddenly some communist party forms to valiantly carry out the revolution and "inspire the masses". I guess I don't get what you're saying. Protesting in the street is not revolution, nor is it "anarchist" to protest in the street, anyone can do that. Burning stuff isn't some special anarchist thing but people who are attracted to anarchism are also attracted to burning stuff. Which is fine and cool, but not a theory of change so I don't know why it would make you think that Marxism-Leninism is wrong and "anarchism" is the way forward. The BLM protests are obviously the best thing to happen to the country in quite a while, but that doesn't mean that more of them will lead to change, it just radicalizes some people.
I also don't feel like you are meaningfully any part of what's going on IRL right now, which sort of underscores the point I was making with this post I guess.
Yeah, but that's because I'm some bougie internet loser, not because of political ideology. And not every left-wing person protesting in the streets is an "anarchist" despite whatever politicians are saying.
I'm there on many nights, I am not reading about it on the internet comrade.
Anarchist to ML pipeline is pretty well-documented, but at a risk of sounding accusatory, it's usually because people don't read enough theory.
And do you think they'll just...let that happen? Have you been paying attention at all to what is happening when we simply go out and protest in PDX and SEA?
Do you think any government in history just "let that happen"? The same tactics used by the state today were used in Russia over 100 years ago, they were used in the US when there was a stronger left-wing presence here too. I think people just have to work with what they have. Join an organization I guess. And maybe the state having a field day with protestors on the ground is actually a sign that there needs to be more political organization, not less.
My lazy answer to you would be Lenin's What is to be done. But I absolutely hated that book (ok, the trashing of other leftists is funny during the five first pages, but then it becomes so... tedious, and it completely drowns the interesting parts), so I'll try to do my best to explain what he says (and how it could translate to our society, although I am not American, bear with me). And if you already read that book and you disagree with me/him/my interpretation, I'd be very much interested in hearing why.
First of all, the repression in Tsarist Russia was harsher, or to be honest, the repression of any movement back in the days. They wouldn't be too concerned with firing on the crowd, killing protesters, torturing agitators etc. Didn't stop them from agitating, writing propaganda, etc.
Lenin says that the most important thing is to have one united propaganda outlet. He mentions a newspaper, because it was the most convenient for them at the time, but we can imagine better nowadays (at least in the core where the vast majority of people has access to the internet). Of course, the drawback is that in our days, it's very hard to catch people's attention, but he kinds of address it (although for a different reason), when he says that all local, smaller outlet should merge into one big enterprise. And we can see it even today: I know a few leftist podcasters, newsletters, e-zines, etc, and their publication rate is quite low. If all these people centralized and worked together, instead of having to get your info from many different sources that might or might have not published anything recently because overwhelmed / disenfranchised, you'd have one big organ, capable of communicating often, quickly, on any important point of the day, to educate and reach the masses.
At the same time, he also explains how there is the need of a strict hierarchical structure in which any given layer of the structure is only aware of the layer right above it, to have as much secrecy as possible (this could be helped nowadays with proper opsec procedures). An organization that allows professional revolutionaries to perfect their craft and go "full time". That sets the plan, infiltrates all stratas of society, etc. An organization that are able to help redirect the spontaneous energy of the masses when it can be done, also (and this is also why the propaganda outlet is very important, specially nowadays, so if there is such spontaneous movement, we can communicate quickly with it, and tell whoever of "us" on the ground to act, agitate, propagate...).
And the organization, the party, needs to theorize and practice which ones are the best ways of moving forward at scale, find the weaknesses / most pronounced and vivid contradictions of capitalism.
Actually, this might be how ML(M) and Anarchists might collaborate. Because there is no denying that on the ground, Anarchists accomplish a lot, but I think that combined with this "big plan" that ML/MLMs tend to have, the infrastructure & propaganda machines, lots could be accomplished
They used to execute leftist leaders in America. In Russia, socialist leaders were all killed, imprisoned, or exiled at some point in their lives. They still managed to lead the people to revolution. What Trump is doing is unprecedented in our lifetimes but it’s weak shit compared to what the people before us has to deal with.
I will back literally any leftist movement at this point (outside of the weird shit)
communism is inevitable! (edit: because climate change will not be stopped. that's the joke.)
I'd back certain kinds of weird shit at this point. Like, let's all try LSD, start urban permaculture farms and begin learning to talk to dolphins. It can't take us anywhere worse than we already are.
We stan pol pot
Death to all nerds
Edit: to all you four eyes downbearing me I'll have you know you're lucky I threw away my glasses years ago cuz I used to be quite the crack shot 💪
Can't tell if this is directed at me or chomsky but I'm willing to compromise and say we are both asshats
Heckye brother. :heart-sickle:
Chomsky ain't the worst but I do believe asshat is a good descriptor of him. At least he ain't a neolib
While I was on sids the other week I was trying to empathize with the four eyeses killed in Khmer Rouge and I just kept imaging the kid who bullied me in second grade but with a Glock that fucker kept calling me four eyes and said my name wrong on purpose :(
I don't know about ML to anarchist pipeline specifically but there does seem to be an increasing trend of MLs who are realising the limits of their ideology and trying to find ways around it. For me I went from borderline Maoist to effectively a Leftcom. From my perspective ML as it exists today just seems really reductive, dogmatic and unnecessarily LARPy. Their defence of Stalin is really weak and their insistence that any and all non western aligned countries should be defended even from resistance from the general population is not great. They also tend to have a rather flexible definition of what 'socialism' means after decades of bastardiation of the term by Soviet and Chinese ideologues. As a result I see people calling Belarus and Venezuela socialist or that China 'is using capitalism to build socialism' which doesnt make sense at all.
Yeah, but it's built on the marxist assumption that theres a single converging path of history that travels through capitalism to socialism.
But I think the more recent turn towards the idea that you can't draw those straight lines through history is more realistic. When we see people controlling the means to life on the long term in the modern day, it's almost never Marxists. China and Vietnam liberalized, Cuba is liberalizing. Venezuela has the communes, and is actively nationalizing and communizing, but is caught in a sort of quagmire.
I think where we're seeing the most success for long term socialism is in indigenous groups synthesizing modern discourses around socialism and gender equality with traditional social structures. The Wetsuweten and the Zapatistas are good examples that survive, but I think we also see this model nascent in the Berber Spring, the socialist movement in Bolivia, Standing rock, etc. Hell, even the Navajo are quietly keeping traditional pastoralism alive alongside their negotiations with the capitalist economy.
I think what we see with China is a new and more sustainable approach to capitalism. A needed counterweight to the US and Western Europe, but only that.
No, it's built on the assumption that the CCP can be powerful/authoritarian enough that when the time comes they can force the transition to socialism, long before state-capitalism destroys itself through its own contradictions.
That is very much the point of the CCP, because running capitalist contradictions to their end is a nightmare bloodbath of poverty, resource depletion, and civil wars.The current posture of the CCP is a defensive one; they are holding on for mere survival against imperialist encirclement. That is why they are so authoritarian, because if the CCP falls, all that remains is pure unstoppable capitalism.
Look, I get that China isn't cute, but this is the brutal reality of what it takes to win. This isn't about having a nice little commune, it is about resisting the capitalist war machine on a global scale.
The reason those movements are successful is often just that they are not sitting on resources that the capitalists care about enough to crush them.
Belarus has fallen to imperialist hands not because of internal politics; but I suspect because the oil pipelines and recently expanded railways from Russia and China into Europe go through there.
And the country has so much publicly owned industry to be privatized and plundered.Just look at the USA, a complete lunatic like Trump can be democratically elected. Average people cannot be trusted to act in their own interests when faced with imperialist and capitalist propaganda.
There can be no freedom until the USA, or even Russia, are weak enough to not overthrow whatever government they want.I live in Europe and the anti-CCP sentiment here is just really bad. It is really bad, and totally detached from reality.
Whatever you want from China, it has to include deterring war with NATO, and avoiding an internal revolution such that the CCP can no longer safeguard the eventual transition.
Yeah there's definitely a certain logic to it, and there's definitely a lot of room for a position of being anti-china from the left (remember that even withing China/CCP there are left and right wings), but you don't get there by rejecting the idea of making liberal reforms as a necessary evil outright.
A state needs to be wealthy before it can transition to socialism. There’s no way of building wealth better than capitalism.
You are literally just agreeing with the neoliberals here. And no, the whole concept of lower phase communism was theorised by marx to solve this problem. He did not advocate using capitalism at all.
Secondly, China has performed the most significant elevation of quality of life in history, bringing hundreds of millions out of poverty in just a few decades. Socialist or capitalist, that ought to be commended, especially as an alternative to the neoliberal West.
Europe and America also had significant elevations in quality of life during the industrial revolution. Are you going to praise them as well? Not only this but China doesn't exactly have the best record in terms of labor laws or social service provision.
Yeah I had a brief infatuation with MLism, mainly just Lenin, but the more I read (and went back to Marx as well as modern writers) and organized with other people the more I felt like everything the modern ML groups were doing was extremely reductive. Since then I've gotten really into reading Marx as political theory, specifically towards a radicalization of republican democracy, and just identify as a Marxist, I suppose a heterodox one, and work with other Marxists in DSA. I still think Lenin had important things to say, but I see tension in the work that played out pretty poorly in the long run and I don't see working now. Been reading Luxemburg and some autonomist, and Marxist humanist stuff recently.
Still keeping my print of a 1918 death to world imperialism poster though, that thing is sick.
this is the one Yeah I have big 36 inch nice print, got it from an old ISO fundraiser.
their insistence that any and all non western aligned countries should be defended even from resistance from the general population is not great
This just means you don't understand geopolitics or really care about western imperialism or understand how it works.
They also tend to have a rather flexible definition of what ‘socialism’ means after decades of bastardiation of the term by Soviet and Chinese ideologues
Bashing actually existing socialist states to advance socialism
As a result I see people calling Belarus and Venezuela socialist
Literally nobody is calling Belarus socialist. And Venezuela has been led by socialists for the last 17 years or so but it's obviously not a socialist economy, a revolution is needed to implement that. Nobody claims that Venezuela has a socialist economy.
China ‘is using capitalism to build socialism’ which doesnt make sense at all.
It makes sense if you look at China's actions in the world and who they help out geopolitically and how their government functions and what happened to the Soviet Union, etc. anything beyond just "communist billionaires haha" memes.
This just means you don’t understand geopolitics or really care about western imperialism or understand how it works.
No I think that a lot of MLs dont understand geopolitics and internal contradictions actually. Non western aligned countries are not in some united opposition to US imperialism, they will align with imperialism when it suits their interests and go against it when it doesnt, Syria and Iraq are good examples in this regard. Not only that but given the capitalist nature of these countries it is inevitable that they will enter crisis that will cause the proletariat in these countries to rise up and seek better arrangements. These movements are then co opted by western imperalists to install a regime that often times is worse than the previous one. As a result it is silly in my opinion to try to uphold some sort of anti imperialist united front which doesnt exist with countries that are not only unwilling to be anti imperialist, but actually cannot be due to the nature of their societies.
Bashing actually existing socialist states to advance socialism
The onus is on them to prove themselves socialist according to Lenin's definition. If they have to revise Lenin along Stalins lines in order to declare themselves socialist then they arent upholding Lenin at all.
Literally nobody is calling Belarus socialist. And Venezuela has been led by socialists for the last 17 years or so but it’s obviously not a socialist economy, a revolution is needed to implement that. Nobody claims that Venezuela has a socialist economy.
I have absolutely seen people say Venezuela has a socialist economy, is a DOTP etc. I have also seen people praise Belarus for having a welfare state as if that is something that is exceptional by european standards.
It makes sense if you look at China’s actions in the world and who they help out geopolitically and how their government functions and what happened to the Soviet Union, etc. anything beyond just “communist billionaires haha” memes.
Chinas actions today are not those of a revolutionary state determined to crush capitalism. They are those of a bourgeois state trying to expand and secure its interests by being more benevolent than its competitors.
Okay, but what about the rest of history, and every other socialist state on the planet?
Finally, another thought regarding material conditions…who are the people out there at this very moment resisting the state? It’s anarchists.
Great, and how's that going for them? What sort of progress are they making?
No one, myself included, is effectively organizing any type of meaningful ML resistance to meet this moment
There's a PSL presence at every major protest.
The dock shutdowns were a major demonstration of organising power with heavy ML involvement in organising and radicalising the action of the unions.
Suggesting the MLs aren't out there organising is just a demonstration of your lack of participation, not a statement of truth.
