This is an overview of the recent argument between InfraHaz and Q. Anthony Omene on the Canadian trucker's "Freedom Convoy". My goal is to highlight the differing leftist perspectives on this issue. Both are highly educated on Marx and Lenin and understanding how they come to such differing conclusions is important if we are to correctly analyze current events through a leftist view.

TLDR: Haz doesn't know shit about shit and gets thoroughly trounced on every issue when challenged by someone who can combat his "supposed knowledge" of Marx and Engels.

It started with Haz's tweet on 5th Feb:

The Canadian Truckers represent a spontaneous working class uprising at its most raw, real and authentic level. The fact that this is even a debate or up for negotiation proves that Western Marxism has nothing in common with Marxism-Leninism.

This began a heated discussion online about the nature of the Trucker protests.

An "informal" rebuttal was posted by Yara Shoufani, a leftist Palestinian-Canadian activist. It consisted of a couple screenshots from an article originally titled: "Backers of 'Freedom Convoy' Cite Overcoming Communism in Their Support of Canadian Truckers" that claimed "Thousands of Canadian truckers, along with other supporters, arrived in Ottawa last month to protest against COVID-19 mandates enforced by the country's liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, and the Communist Party of Canada."

She followed that up with a couple tweets summarizing her view:

“Working class uprising” led by a tiny % of the total trucker workforce with ties to Canada’s most fringe and fascist parties including political parties advocating for Albertan separatism, and who see themselves as “fighting communism”

The rallies in support of them have been filled with fascist groups and individuals who have been harassing actual communists in the country for years. This is textbook fascism but because they’re “white workers” Haz thinks this is a real worker uprising.

You can follow her twitter to read more of her thoughts or read the following Passage article for a more "formal" rebuttal - The Trucker Convoy Is Not A Workers’ Revolt. This article comes up later as it was tweeted out by Q and merged into the argument between him and Haz.

Anyway, Haz responded to her tweets:

And this is a case of someone who confuses ideologies with material reality. The working class is not defined by being ideologically correct or class-conscious. Most spontaneous working class uprisings have a rightist ideological orientation. And for that, blame yourself.

This drew Q into the conversation:

The working class is defined by sale of one’s labor in exchange for money, so what would the rest of us look like aligning with owners present at the protest, while truckers themselves are for the most part not participating, or even blocked from reentering Canada by the convoy?

This is the difference between communism as an aesthetic, and communism as a practice. Having to actually read first, and be disciplined in one’s approach when representing the ideology in public

Haz then officially started the "debate":

The working class only sells its labor for money atop a foundation of reproducing the very conditions of labor. Hence, why there has never been a pure proletariat in history. It was always mixed with a peasantry that did own something. I challenge you to a debate on this topic.

Where you saw a proletariat, that is, utterly devoid of anything except its own labor, there was in fact a peasant in transition - from one form of 'ownership' to another. After WWII, ownership of homes and cars replaced this proverbial piece of land.

Q:

Atop a what. ~80% of truckers in Canada are company drivers, ~20 are owner-operators. When I say owners I am talking about OWNERS, i.e. the people who own trucking fleets and subject their drivers to abysmal working conditions (to the extent they make up 80% of labor violations)

I don't care about your obscure land purchase exceptions for freeholding tenants in 12th century France, I am talking about conditions as they exist right now Debating this is senseless, seeing as how there exists no condition in your mind by which you could ever be wrong

Haz:

First you appeal to theory, then posture ignorance as if it's justified. Why argue if you're ignorant of 21st century Marxism? Your article was referring to truckers who owned their own trucks, and classified them as petite bourgeois on that basis.

And you have no clue about the world, our current mode of production, and class relations "right now." Then again your dogmatic academic Marxism can't even explain basic aspects of today's economies like currency wars or derivatives.

The article referenced here is the Passage article mentioned above. It claimed "The trucker convoy is a “revolt” of petit-bourgeoisie owner-operators, financially backed by wealthy right-wing grifters — not the vast majority of exploited trucking workers."

To which Haz had responded earlier:

Uber drivers, commonly known as petite-bourgeois 'owner operators'

Almost the entire post WWII working class, sells its labor atop a foundation of 'ownership.' The working class works in a mecha-suit they 'own,' which represents a parcelized piece of the industrial polity they themselves built in the early 20th C.

Electricians own their own toolkits. Are they owner operators? Conveniently, the Baizuo left wants to define the working class as those utterly dependent on INSTITUTIONS capable of realizing their cultural agenda via social engineering. Using the desperation of migrants, etc

As a way to blackmail them into backing leftists causes. The left failed to win the working class, so they turned to the most vulnerable and marginalized as the only 'working class,' since the latter, they feel, can be manipulated more.

Q:

Owner-operators are, by the nature of owning the truck and having the ability to license surplus inventory out to drivers, petite bourgeois. They don't own the MoP, but they can buy the labor of others whom they work alongside. What else would you call them?

The article didn't simply refer to owner-operators BTW, the author inferred that many of the trucks at the convoy were run by owner-operators, since employees tying up company trucks for days or weeks at a time would cut their owners' throats profit-wise

Haz:

Again, the same is true for small middle peasants - the ones lenin believed were the backbone of the democratic revolution. You are totally clueless about class in the 21st century. The distinction between prole/bourgeois rests upon a substrate that is not unconditional.

That substrate is reproduced politically, through the material reproduction of the conditions of labor and capital. And today's working class at once reproduces these conditions via small ownership, and on that basis sells its labor.

In China: migrants go to work in cities while having a small plot of land in the countryside, for example. There is no pure proletariat and never has been in history.

The PETITE BOURGEOISIE historically owned means of production at the expense of capital and the forces of production - today's working class compounds means of production to facilitate the forces of production and labor. That's the difference - compound vs static ownership.

Q:

What tf is a small middle peasant in relation to Lenin's theory of vanguardism? They didn't even begin to exist until after the revolution, and Lenin specifically defined middle peasants as those who "do not exploit the labor of others," which would rule out owner-operators

Is this man under the impression Russian peasants were buying up land left right and center after 1861? Or that those who did, hired no farm hands?