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

  • Ideology [she/her]
    ·
    3 years ago

    It looks reasonable on the surface, but the way he uses words is important. The "working class" aren't lumpenproles and I'm tired of patsoc adjacents who've never been in those social spaces say they are. It's really obvious they don't know what the fuck they're talking about and don't actually know the people they're describing.

    Proles are your machine operators, bottom of the bottom tier office drones, workshop and cnc techs, welders, mechanics, farm ops, and travelling union technicians. Being reactionary doesn't make them "lumpenproles."

    Lumpenproles are your temp workers who live precariously whether industriously pushing paper in offices or doing all the shittest most dangerous jobs in factory. They're store/restaurant "associates" who simultaneously get shit on by customers and managers. They're both the rural gas station attendant/bathroom cleaner with a blue lives matter decal on her truck and the corner store cashier who saw someone with his skin color get shot by cops last week. Lumpens are the immigrants who pick your vegetables and slaughter your meat. They are the grease in the gears and the fuel of the proletarian machine. No industry would exist without them, but they are often ignored or derided by proles and "PMC" whether lib or conservative.

    Lumpenproles don't care about aesthetics nearly as much as working class proles and labor aristocrats. They're extremely realistic about their situations and care quite a lot about topics that are close to their material needs. They're not as uneducated in these things as people think they are, and they would not be difficult to radicalize. They do care about race politics, they care about lgbt issues, they care about abortion, they care about schools and violence. They care about these things because they immediately affect them, they do not care about party lines because they think all politicians are liars, including commies. You are not going to sway them by talking about the means of production. They literally do not care about the means of production because they can't afford to. They care about how political decisions will affect their lives in the near term.

    Once again I will suggest people will read Mao's BE CONCERNED WITH THE WELL BEING OF THE MASSES. Fuck off with this synthetic left bullshit.

      • Ideology [she/her]
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        They are not low-rung wage workers with stable employment, as you seem to suggest.

        I was not suggesting that though? Temp jobs are by definition precarious (from experience) and most store jobs are seasonal or will change your schedule without explanation (or just take you off the schedule if you become inconvenient for any reason). They're not very stable normally. Produce harvesting is also seasonal and slaughterhouses have extremely high turnover due to the way they physically and psychologically chew through people.

        I've been in some similar situations and temp workers are usually immigrants who don't speak a lot of english (which adds to the precarity) and their schedules aren't regular. Their work site can go down or do layoffs at the drop of a hat and they have little recourse. In some cases they can be jerked around to different worksites for a few days at a time with days to weeks between assignments, and the pay is not exactly livable.

        I also disagree with the Luxemburgian notion that lumpenproles aren't radicalizable. IMO they're more radicalizable than a lot of proles. I generally take issue with proles with more income and job security, but I think the labor aristocrat/pmc defintions suit them more.

          • Ideology [she/her]
            ·
            edit-2
            3 years ago

            This is all fair in a historical sense, but imo we need a word to describe these people as they exist now because there is a very real subculture surrounding this sort of pool of employee-churning low wage workers that draws ire from both neolibs and certain leftists.

            I'm especially not a fan of the way patsocs and the people who borrow their terminology try to distance themselves from this group. "Working class" is a common and honestly kinda transparent term for middle class proles (and typically white ones at that) that they like to throw around now. The people who use the term seem to have Browderist intentions. I'm not afraid that patsocs will succeed but that they'll bring the rest of the movement down with them by snubbing people who suffer the most as unimportant obstacles.

    • TheLegendaryCarrot23 [he/him]
      ·
      3 years ago

      See my friend @ZoomeristLeninist this is a quintessential example of a good materialist analysis based on the real experiences and issues workers face rather then loaded ideology . Sorry if this all seems like a pile on, but it's just because we know your heart's in the right place. And not to be dramatic because - ya know life goes on for most of us westoids- , but just don't be led down the wrong path by these media people who claim to be leftist when they are nothing of the sort.

      • Ideology [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        I'm just really tired of labor aristocrats pretending they know what people less privileged than they are are like. It doesn't matter what tendency they are, they always treat the poor like sheep in need of a shepherd and not overwhelmed balls of stress teetering on the edge of loosing everything.

        They'll also bend over backwards doing anything to avoid having to talk to black people. They will literally platform white middle class Trump supporters first.

    • ZoomeristLeninist [they/them, she/her]
      hexagon
      ·
      3 years ago

      thank you for the explanation. i think i was missing a lot of the red flags in the original thread and expressing my prejudice that white lumpenproles are automatically reactionary. on second glance this is pretty elitist of me. i really dont like patsoc types and they seem really reactionary to me but this thread worked on me sadly.

      this struggle session has been very helpful for me :soviet-heart:

      • Ideology [she/her]
        ·
        3 years ago

        No worries. Most of the time when I post I direct my internal monologue at lurkers rather than the OP. I'm glad you're not too overwhelmed by the backlash, lol. I just don't want people reading this to get the wrong idea about "the poors" because it's kinda obvious most people on hexbear don't interact much with extreme poverty.