EDIT: i now see the glaring problem with this thread- it assumes proletarians (white ones especially) are mostly reactionary and won't advocate for their own class interests. further, he only addresses two types of americans, the radlib and the white reactionary. this thread is almost entirely unhelpful to people on this site who are in neither category and consistently fight back against libs and reactionaries alike.
also the term "synthetic left" was coined by calep maupin, a patsoc and genuinely revolting person
a better tweet than this would have been "radlibs appropriate the struggles of marginalized people to distract from the struggle of the working class, but the material conditions of the working class are affected by structures like racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, etc. 1/2" "Therefore a mass communist movement must focus on improving the material conditions of the lower classes, but especially to those most oppressed under capitalism"
this was quite the struggle session
Thank you to everyone who shared their input, you guys are the best :soviet-heart: communism will win, love you all
PS read some Mao
Nah half this shit is just tailism. There's a difference between being an ultra and imagining a different mode of life or society, just like there's a difference between lib identity politics and recognizing how class oppression is entangled with racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.
This is like an inch away from saying "Hide the gays so you don't scare the white working class!"
He is just saying that class struggle comes first as it is central to capitalism and is able to unite the largest number of people. This isn't to say other struggles aren't important, just that those other struggles can be co-opted by capital and used against the proletariat (e.g. the commercialization and neutering of BLM, rainbow capitalism/pinkwashing, framing imperialist wars as "fighting for womens rights" cough Afghanistan cough).
We should be bringing the lumpenproles into our folds, not alienating them. This isn't to say we should cater to any reactionary views they may hold, just that, as communists, we should be educating them. And working class trump supporters will be most susceptible to education on material reality. Once these former conservatives have a principled stance against the bourgeoisie, we can educate them further away from other reactionary viewpoints with tools like struggle sessions.
Xiangyu does not at all advocate for tailism, the goal of this thread was to point out that the western left isn't focused on what would make our goals a reality (building worker power and solidarity, educating the masses, converting more people into communists, and forging networks of aid and communication independent from approved bourgeois networks). Every working class person has revolutionary potential and this us vs. them mentality stands in the way of building a true mass movement.
Why do I need to interact with people who are already hostile to me as a default? There are working class people who aren’t willing to shoot you for wearing a hoodie, you know.
No you see, you're only working class if you're a 40 year old white dude working for a plumbers union
you, specifically, don't have to interact with people who are hostile to you. but someone should. there are white, cishet, male leftists who can and should reach out to working class people who are culturally reactionary.
wanting to murder me for being alive isn’t a culture war issue. It’s fash shit.
fascism has cultural aspects. im not saying cultural struggles arent important.
Base and Superstructure. Class struggle isn't separate from racial, gender or other struggles. They exist in a dialectical relationship.
What should we be focusing on? Hell, what is the "western left?" Is it geographically bound? Who comprises it? What conditions need to arise to make our goals, whatver those are, a reality and can you hold "leftists" responsible for the state of things if those conditions don't exist?
I don't know who you heard say that working class conservatives shouldn't be reached out to, or why you seem to be conflating the "working class" wih Trump's voter base. But the thread is absolutely advocating tailism, proceeding from the false notion that rote economics is the only vector along which working class people experience capitalist oppression.
good point. im not trying to say we should deemphasize racial, gender, etc. struggles, rather we should emphasize class struggle. every successful proletarian revolution has seen a deliberate change in the base (through changes in the workers' relationship to the means of production as well as increasing productive forces). this forced change of the base of society lead to changes in the superstructure.
building worker power and solidarity, educating the masses, converting more people into communists, and forging networks of aid and communication independent from approved bourgeois networks
leftists in the imperial core. this mostly applies to more privileged leftists (PMC, white, cishet men)
mass class consciousness, which won't be achieved by insisting on maintaining the fractured state of the proletariat brought about by the bourgeoisie. the goal is proletarian revolution leading to a socialist workers' state
where in the thread does it say communists should follow reactionary tendencies just because they are popular?
Implying class oppression is a sepatate issue and should be treated as such
Inplying those are separate issues and should be treated as such
class oppression is central to capitalism and emphasizing it above other struggles is not meant to ignore other struggles. in fact, to truly support the struggles of BIPOC, LGBT, and women, one must accept that their struggle results from a bourgeois need to fracture the proletarian. the western communist movement can support things like landback, reparations, queer liberation, gender equality, etc. but we will never achieve these things absent of a true mass movement. and you don't get a mass movement by treating lumpenproles as the other and scapegoating them for the problems caused by the bourgeoisie.
again, this is NOT to say we should surrender to their reactionary views, rather we should focus on educating and building solidarity
No. That’s literally not how this shit works. Patriarchy is older than capitalism and it survives past capitalism into socialist societies when it is not aggressively combatted.
Marginalized people demand respect and liberation. We are not guaranteed foot soldiers for some kind of white boy socialist project. I cannot build solidarity with someone who doesn’t view me as human.
older than capitalism, yes. but older than class? no
i see where you are coming from. im not saying reactionary views should be accepted in the movement, just that people with reactionary views need education
Arguing semantics is boring. Read up on kyriarchy if you want to nerd out on how this works.
Every successfully revolution has focused on combatting other systems of oppression in addition to class / capitalism.
We agree on this then, good. 👍
This got reported, but I'm leaving this up cause it seems like you came around.
Capitalism benefits from and encourages racism etc, but bigotry is a religion for a lot of people, sometimes literally, and meeting peoples' material needs will only make fighting it a a little easier.
thanks! yeah, not surprising that it was reported since i was being pretty obtuse and borderline defending reactionaries
but this thread really helped me examine my own counter-revolutionary biases. im almost finished reading settlers. learned a lot the past couple weeks thanks to the comrades in this thread