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This, but then when I see western leftists saying the USSR was fascist and that we can't trust those duplicitous Asiatics in China I go back to :doomer:
cw: could be interpreted as sectarian
Many westerners come to socialism not out of necessity, but out of disillusionment. We are raised with the idea that Liberal Democracy is the best system of political expression humanity has devised. When confronted with the reality of its shortcomings, rather than narrowly discard liberalism or electoralism, the western anti-capitalist tends to draw sweeping conclusions about the inadequacy of all existing systems. Curiously, though it would at first seem that such denunciations are more principled and severe, they are in fact more compatible with existing and widespread beliefs about the supremacy of the western system. That is to say, when a Marxist-Leninist asserts the superiority of existing socialist experiments, they are directly challenging the idea that westerners are at the forefront of political development. By contrast, the assertions from anarchists and social democrats that we need to build a more utopian future out of our current apex are compatible not only with each other, as discussed earlier, but also do not really offend bourgeois society at large. They in fact end up not sounding too different from the arch-imperialist Winston Churchill holding forth on how ours is the worst system, except for all the others which have been tried. Western chauvinists, consciously or unconsciously, struggle with the idea that they should study and humbly take lessons from the imperial periphery. [15] It is much easier for the chauvinist, psychologically, to position oneself as at the very front of a new vanguard.
from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/
Yeah pretty much this. There are perhaps people that call themselves anarchists and think this way, but they are terribly misguided.
I think it is more accurate to say that people in the west are driven to anti-capitalism out of disillusionment and they are often more scared of the word socialism than anarchism and so many land at the latter without ever really examining the total scope of the task ahead of us.
the assertions from anarchists and social democrats that we need to build a more utopian future out of our current apex
This is mixing and matching. Anarchists align with engaging in prefigurative politics (something Marxists and others smear as "utopian"); social democrats align with building out of the most robust economies and electoral systems. These are not really compatible with each other.
The main commonality between anarchist and demsoc politics is the sense of being able to tangibly move forward incrementally both in the present moment before the revolutionary "threshold", and afterwards too.
I think the most revolutionary action the average western leftist can take is learning Mandarin and reading theory. Become the Chinese Marxist that Reddit thinks you are
But what would you actually do with Mandarin, aside from plan to move to China or becoming a business ghoul that focuses on China?
VPN to China and experience the internet the way it's meant to be experienced :deng-salute:
I don't think I'd feel confident reading Chinese theory in Chinese without... probably a decade of learning. But that is a good point about how we miss out on so much due to a lack of translations and that pushback is difficult with intentional mistranslations.
I suppose you could talk to a billion and a half Chinese people. May e they have something to say.
One of us might slip and tell you the ancient Chinese secret of overthrowing your government.
We have thousands of years of practice you know.
Americans are the product of recent settler-colonialism and are at the heart of the imperial core, which is very effective at propagandizing (or killing) them. Left spaces here are usually liberal and anticommunist, hell they're even usually anti-anarchist. We tend to have:
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Intransigent liberals.
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Anticommunist Trots that think they're the second coming of Lenin.
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Socdems/Demsocs that can't imagine organizing society any way other than the Nordic model.
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An extremely small minority of MLs and ancoms. They tend to get sucked into labor organizing or mutual aid, which seem like good things but are easily coopted into the liberal hegemony here. If you organize a union with radicals, expect it to be populated by libs within 5 years. So, long-term, you'd better hope that "one more union" is helping to build revolution. Keep in mind that unions are just as likely to save American liberalism as help destroy it, though - and will be making connections with the Democratic party.
On the timetables we have, socialist revolution is very unlikely or very difficult to predict. In either case, you can't really organize for revolution in particular, just growing of the ranks and teaching theory as best you can. We desperately need more commies of any stripe except anticommunist commies, so we should find ways to get people into productive reading groups, leading such groups, and presenting a good example to others so that communist resonates as a good thing (channeling some Mao, lol).
By default, Americans will be getting "reproletarianized" soon, which is to say increasingly close to hyperexploited. This will be due to the US slowly running out of tricks to balance itself on top of the global south. Maybe we can capture that scenario to create more communists. Or maybe the disaffected will demand a return to glory and their due, knowingly on the backs of the global south. The latter is infinitely more likely than a socialist revolution in the next 30 years. And under that assumption, I organize to make more commies: so that we survive a downtown where we are outnumbered 10:1 by liberals and chuds.
I don't disagree with any of your analysis but I personally believe that the history of places like China, and of revolutions in general, show us that even the most powerful and successfully repressive of governments are only a bad winter, a drought, or a military defeat away from being overthrown.
I know exactly what you mean by this but the pedant in me wants to point out that we had all 3 of those things almost back to back
you also need people who hope for something better and are guided by revolutionary theory
Of course, but... replaced by what? Many revolutions don't actually change the class relationships, they just throw off the current iteration and then ideologically collapse in on themselves because the conditions weren't there to challenge the fundamentals of classes. The US has a much stronger right wing than left and if revolution happened now me and mine would just get murdered. Like in Indonesia, but there are even fewer of us and liberalism is popular within "the left", meaning they won't arm or organize. Hell, a ton, possibly majority, of anyone that would call themselves leftist here promote gun control and abhor weapons. And the military is very much on the liberal side of the equation.
The conditions for revolution are coming, but the question is: how will we navigate them? How big do we need to be to survive? How do we recruit? How do we overcome overriding, deeply ingrained anticommunism? On the current course, the two most likely outcomes are (1) the extermination of the American left by a neofascist resurge or (2) a prolonged civil war in which we lose a ton but do does everyone else, and we only stand a chance of emerging alive after decades of widespread death and political realignment by necessity. Both of these events follow a general, long economic downtown with no coherent reasons to actually subscribe to for liberals or conservatives, which is all but inevitable unless neoliberalism part 2 gets a chance to kick in (this only happens if China does, for some reason, collapse, which I don't think it will). When spending most of your wage on food returns to the norm, we will see the true expression of the cult of capital.
I will tell you this, that the majority of young working class people would sooner mutilate themselves then actually go to war.
Which means a violently enforced draft which will galvanize the more hyper exploited working class and create an insanely massive opening for rapid radicalization.
If the US has to mobilize for a losing war, that's it for the regime. Maybe fascism wins out, but I don't see it surviving. Especially because the right is on the backfoot in the domestic society sphere.
The only real hindrance to this is atomic exchange, which will also be a working class victory (although very phyrric). The ashes will need to be rebuilt and the old order will be dead.
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Cue Westoid economists sneering at this because it doesn't pay itself off within the current fiscal year.
I am like this close to starting a new branch of phrenology which claims that white people are incapable of long term planning due to the shape of their brainpans.
Don't they even care about their national debt? You aren't allowed to do good things if you have even a single dollar of national debt! Fiscal responsibility :rage-cry:
Anyway, I'm strongly I favor of increasing our military budget so that we can send F-35s to Ukraine.
Sounds like you're in the market for rare Earth minerals, that'll be $75 trillion :xicko:
From what I've read: Imagine every time you thought "Damn, I wish my country would do more of __________ to fight climate change". China has included every single one of those cool things in their investments.
Can you recommend some articles? The news seems very subdued, almost suppressed when I try search it up
It's been months since I read up on it so I can't remember any exact sources but if I come across any I'll be sure to let you know.
