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OP this reads like my 20s so let me tell you what I've seen of that experience in hindsight:
Bitterness comes easy when you're young, especially if you've managed to develop a class conciousness. But as you get older and your body gets shittier and maybe you start a family, you realize that you're not gonna see the end of this thing. That you won't be the one standing over capitalism's grave, you're just another body in the pile our descendants will have to climb to get there.
Realizing that turns all your resentment and spite to ash. Anger's still there, sure, but less at individuals and more at the system itself. You start to see people as products of their environment, whose individual experience of privilege is out of your control and usually not worth the high blood pressure getting angry about.
By all means take your time felling resentful, if that's what you need right now. But those feelings may just fade on their own if you let them.
I think of this as crude class consciousness. The ability to see the injustices of class but the inability to see that the people without class consciousness are being influenced by the system and need to be broken out of it. It's not their fault that they're influenced by the system, their attitudes are a product of being a victim of the system and environment in a different way.
Crude class consciousness grants people the ability to see various injustices and perform class analysis while a true class consciousness grants an absolute love for the class and everyone in it. Fred Hampton's speech here is a pretty good example of this, where he talks about it being a mistake to think you're better than "the people", and how important it is for everything to be based in an absolute love for them.
I think the difference is looking at things from the individual perspective vs the collective perspective.
I don't disagree with some of this, but think I do on a couple parts. I don't want this to come off as a dismissal though, I do agree with a good amount of it.
I think, from my perspective, I've spent a number of decades creating all kinds of different communities, online and offline and also as a job for companies. An aspect of community building is liking the people including the bad ones, in part because there's not a whole lot you can do about them unless you purge them (not always the best approach) and in part because the drama certain elements bring is entertaining, and another part being that over time you can watch these people grow and change too.
I apply this same experience to spreading the red, to lifting more and more people out of ignorance and into consciousness. Yes this sounds very pretentious and you're absolutely right to take a stab at that because describing it that way sounds like dogshit but I do not have a better way to describe it. Education is the only tool we have and education creates consciousness and I have personally watched it create an unbelievable number of reds. Will those reds be revolutionaries? Not right now, I agree. But we have zero ability to affect the material conditions. We can only spread the red until the material conditions are right and then watch and hope that we have spread enough red that flips revolutionary under the deteriorating conditions.
I like the shits in the communities I build, communities are sort of like weird ant farms and I enjoy sitting back and watching them after putting work in to build and foster them. I also like the people, including the shit ones, the ones who haven't yet flipped, etc etc.
As an aside to this -- I really think that the trans community using "egg" has parallels to radicalisation. There is a socialist red egg-cracking that occurs.
So Mao's advice here is directed at Communist party members in a military organization actively engaged in a war of national liberation (CPC members at the outset of the Second Sino-Japanese War). I doubt Mao intended for party members to waste their breath debating politics with their national and class enemies (in this case Imperial Japan and the KMT, respectively). If a person is a comrade, then it is worth taking time to argue about ideology and strategy in a respectful manner in appropriate venues. If a person is not a comrade this effort can be wasteful or counterproductive.
The alternative is to leave people alone if they have no material interest in changing society in the way you want to see it changed. Find your allies and do politics with them. I have known several people who rent out rooms in houses they own. I don't seek out opportunities to inform them that as a class landlords oppress and immiserate renters as a class. If someone I know is a member of a reactionary labor union I don't tell them how much I prefer the politics of more left-wing unions. People generally know what side their bread is buttered on. It's just way more sensible to discuss politics with members of your own class in the context of political projects. I'm taking the time to express my conflicting interpretation of Mao here because I think our politics are more or less aligned and we both have a genuine interest in understanding the passage. In my reading Mao is advising on personal conduct within a revolutionary collective, not within the society as a whole. It's an important distinction.
Yeah didnt mao also like murder a bunch of peasant landlords lol
uh actually mao didnt order anything of the sort, he just didnt prosecute people that did :mao-wave:
I'm just going to assume this isn't a bit, so if this is :bait: congrats you got me. I can't speak with authority on the entire history of the CPC's land reform efforts, but I can point to a relevant section of an English language book on Chinese history that deals with this very topic during the period of time when Mao was writing and distributing "Combat Liberalism". From "In Search of Modern China" by Jonathan Spence (1991), chapter 14, subhead "Wuhan Summer, Canton Winter":
In late 1926 and early 1927 there had been notable signs of peasant unrest in China. In some areas the peasants had seized the land for themselves, formed "poor peasants associations" to run their communities, and publicly paraded, humiliated, and in many cases killed the more hated of the local landlords. Peng Pai had had dramatic success in forming radical peasant associations near Canton, until they were counterattacked by landlord forces. Mao Zedong, who had risen while in Canton to become director of the Guomindang's Peasant Movement Training Institute, also had several opportunities in 1925 and 1926 to propagandize CCP views in the Hunan countryside, especially around Changsha. In February 1927, after the Northern Expedition had passed through the region, he took the time to study what was happening and wrote an excited report for a local CCP journal.
Mao was particularly impressed by the power of the poor peasants and their political consciousness. "They raise their rough, blackened hands and lay them on the heads of the gentry," he wrote. "They alone are the deadliest enemies of the local bullies and evil gentry and attack their strongholds without the slightest hesitation; they alone are able to carry out the work of destruction." The CCP, he noted, could take the initiative with these peasant stalwarts if it chose: "To march at their head and lead them? To follow in the rear, gesticulating at them and criticizing them? To face them as opponents? Every Chinese is free to choose among the three." But Mao implied that it would be folly to ignore this immense potential force. If one assessed the 1926-1927 "democratic revolution" on a ten-point scale, he observed, then the "urban dwellers and the military rate only three points, while the remaining seven points should go to the peasants in their rural revolution."
Also it may be helpful to review Mao's "How to Differentiate the Classes in the Rural Areas", written a few years later in 1933. Here he describes in plain language rural class distinctions as he understood them at the time.
Murder implies that a person was killed, and leeches don't qualify.
I dont have an opinion, I dont really know what a kulak is still. Isnt it a better off peasant who was reactionary during early USSR history? If its that then its bad and I dont like it. Theres a lot of stuff to digest as far as socialist history and I just havent really dug into USSR tbh w you.
WTF is a peasant landlord? No. Mao didn't kill any of those because they don't exist. A peasant by definition owns little to no land.
Agree if they wake up theyll reach out to you, their rag wearing dirt-covered friend whom they previously ignored
I'm fucking dying I called them the kumbaya contingent and that was a bridge too far. Middle class people, lmao
I think most of the comments on this post are considering mental health
I'm gonna dissent from the majority opinion here and say: fuck them, you don't owe them shit just because they've begun to exhibit some baseline sympathy for the less fortunate that should be expected of any human being.
Being a good leftist doesn't require you to engage with people who have traumatized you, especially if they haven't taken any steps to make amends.
I learned from a young age that I should assume that every Cracker is a racist until proven otherwise. I think that coming to that realization was harder on me than living with that realization.
I don't mean what I said in the sense of "never befriend crackers". Half of my closest friends are white, but I didn't get close to any of them before getting to know them and making sure none of them were racist chuds beforehand.
Agree, i think the people disagreeing are just showing their ass and class privilege.
At least for me, the distrust left from abusive relationships started to fade once I cut them out. It wasn't solely from leaving the relationships, but the opportunity for it to fade would not have been possible without it.
you don't want to feel bad, and you recognize that the reason you feel bad is because of your past.
this doesn't seem like a theory problem. chase down a therapist and talk to them about it.
Good take.
I'll add that any significant change on a large scale is going to require working with people like this, and probably with people who have a lot shittier backgrounds. You're simply not going to have a large political movement made entirely of "perfect" leftists. So however we do it, we have to find a way to get along with these folks (so long as "what she’s willing to actually do" matches what she's willing to say).
Then there's the question of incentives to change oneself. If someone changes their objectionable behavior and is still rejected due to past objectionable behavior, why would they stick with it? You have to give people a path into the fold.
Lastly, every time a topic like this comes up I think of prison abolition. We're talking about giving every possible chance to people who have violently hurt others, but we're struggling with someone who was merely a mean person? There's a contradiction to resolve there.
Even if that 5% does something good/useful i still feel like i can resent them without rejecting them fully. "Rich" people existing is a weird corruption in humanity, its not a real thing or some natural law and it sucks that it exists. I dont feel bad for rich people with class conscious if they only post and are right opinion havers.
Yeah that sucks. You're going to have different politics from those people in your life who are in different material circumstances. The urgency of your politics will be different as well. I'd advise you to try and stop caring about it so much. Politics isn't done as a series of arguments where the best ideas win; it's more about organizing groups of people whose interests are already in alignment. In my life I have found that doing politics in a party organization has made me less resentful and less annoying. The energy I used to spend arguing with friends and family or worrying about whether they have the correct opinions can now be directed to more constructive efforts with likeminded comrades. It does take a lot of effort to do party politics though. If you're struggling in your life the last thing you need is more meetings.
Same! I strongly dislike Felix of CTH
I don’t know what he normally does, but I remember someone posting a series of tweets from him complaining about gyms in his boogie New York neighborhood requiring masks lol
It's not that boogie a neighborhood, it hardly even funks. (Sorry)
You have to let that resentment go. It will eat you up inside and make you bitter and you will inadvertently close your mind to new ideas. If you are still friends with these people and want to communicate still then you need to talk to them about how in the past you were hurting and you are disappointed that they didn't see that or ignored it. If they act nonchalant or dismissive then just cut them out of your life. Better to do it sooner than later, especially if it's causing you anguish.
Source: was a bitter bastard for a long time but hid behind a facade of humor and jokes. Don't do what I did. Don't tell a lie so long and often that you start to believe it yourself. I am convinced it is an indirect kind of self harm.
what else is there to know besides rich people suck and ruin the world even if they're "lefties", i feel like being bitter to some degree is a healthy reaction to that unwinnable situation.
Because you're bent out of shape over someone making good money working in medicine who is being radicalized in their work place and you can't see a good thing for what it is because you can't get past your own petty and personal grievances. Should wealth disparity be even higher so that people can either be billionaires or poor enough to fit your standard of some capable of being an ally?
I think what frustrates OP is that their entire life and the difficulties they experienced growingn up was already revealed to these people already and it seemingly meant nothing to them. They were at the time close friends and it's painful that not only was that her real experience minimized and ignored by her friends, the idea of that kind of experience might now be a vainglorious facebook psot for likes. Cringe.
And maybe thats how you see the world, but for me making a twitter post isnt radicalizing, its posting. I hate rich people like how I hate cops, even rich lefties.
Iunno sometimes it just all vibes and a post like this kind of gives me a similar reaction
Ah yes, the Immortal Vibe Based Ambling of Marxist Lenninism. Read a book
Idk, this literally sounds like aesthetics-based class analysis. Might as well think someone with a pick-up truck is automatically 'working class'.
I feel like my attitude is overwhelmingly common amongst the people i grew up with and people who dont have it didnt come from poverty.
I'm not disagreeing that it is the predominately popular attitude, especially among the working poor, what I am saying is that it's a poor method of class analysis that deliberately obfuscates things you have in common with other working class individuals, things that could potentially lead to solidarity and revolutionary class struggle. Not that it is particularly likely in the U.S.
I understand the frustration and anger of not 'being recognized' for having the right opinions. Or the intellectual babying that is done towards the upper-middle 'class'. But there is still some value in remembering the parable of the prodigal son. It's just there is no farm for those in poverty to materially still have, unfortunately, so it's not really a one-to-one.
That's why this website with an enormous middle class streak is rejecting it lol
The corpus of comments on this post prove to me utterly that even the epic communists who are middle class are spoiled brats who feel the need to lecture everyone whenever someone expresses envy and resentment of their class position.
If it's vibes based then almost no westerner is poor enough.
I think im fine actually and i just didnt want to answer your question
Because you’re bent out of shape over someone making good money working in medicine who is being radicalized in their work place and you can’t see a good thing for what it is
I would bet my bottom dollar that neither Mary nor Brenda will ever become revolutionaries.
I would bet my bottom none of us will be either. At least Mary is like, healing the sick.
At least Mary is like, "healing the sick" through the money of her parents and her good education, maybe if we all had those same opportunities and if becoming a doctor didnt have a bunch of arbitrary hurdles set by already existing rich American doctors to get through we'd have more doctors and less doctor worship.
Yeah, that would be cool. Mary is no more or less guilty or innocent about that not being the case tho. And doctors have been held pretty high in cultural standing wayyyyyy before capitalism. Cause they heal the sick and being sick is a bummer.
Youre the one giving them that standing, its only a current feature in our society because we have fucked up laws in who and how many people can practice medicine in the US due to already rich american doctors not wanting competition.
Look into like, any civilization, ever, with few if any exceptions people practicing medicine are appreciated. It is socially reproductive labor. Once again, you've done as much to change these laws as Mary, so, how's it relevant?
Its a great job no one is arguing that, the problem is that to become one in our modern society you have to be insanely lucky (like my best friends sister) or already rich. We should be doing better at this point in the game
Okay, once again, how is this any more any individual medical practioners fault for not changing it any more.than it is your own fault? What are they gonna do? A work stoppage and let people literally die? Its actually a field where you are likely to get to meet several people who will straight up be killed by the system in front of you with you knowing it could have been prevented if it weren't for the system. It's not gonna be all doctors but also, you don't need 100% of people 100% on board, you need the right amount of the right people 100% on board and a sizeable enough amount who are 50% there or higher. They may not become a Revolutionary, but they may support one after it succeeds, if anything they're on the right track.
Just noticed OP went to college and is therefore higher on the class scale than me so I win anyway.
:fry: I'm a college dropout, not a high school dropout so I'm in the middle strata of my friend group
True the AMA is assumed to be good by most people since doctors but it's kinda fucked
Lol so what the fuck is the point of your preaching? Hit dog kinda thing?
Actual class consciousness and not weird childish spite and lashing out about people becoming better because they make decent money. Like, it's not even an important person they're upset about. They aren't a capitalist and they're becoming a better person. The point in preaching is get the fuck over yourself. I will once again ask, cause I have 2 other times in this thread to no answer: how poor is poor enough to not deserve to be hated? This is a childish and self absorbed perspective. I'm sure their are people worse off who see OP as Mary and I'm certain that Mary is no where near the top of the class pile and probably feels her own class resentment. It's lib shit to be upset over this person to this extent.
Actual class consciousness and not weird childish spite and lashing out about people becoming better because they make decent money.
Class consciousness does not mean you have to be nice in your mind to every labor aristocrat who discovers that other people exist. We've already agreed that these people are not going to be revolutionary, don't pretend this has anything to do with Socialism.
I will once again ask, cause I have 2 other times in this thread to no answer: how poor is poor enough to not deserve to be hated?
Far below whatever you make, clearly.
1.That's literally not what labor aristocracy means.
- Give me an annual income. I need numbers
1.That’s literally not what labor aristocracy means.
Oh please do enlighten me.
- Give me an annual income. I need numbers
Sorry I'm off of my job where I'm a servant to middle class people, I'm not going to dance and clap my hands for you.
The concept of labor aristocracy refers to exploited workers in the first world being in turn exploiters of imperial labor through cheaper products, services etc. Basically NAFTA kinda shit. It's not really something you can blame an individual for being part of like any other part of the system, it also super does not refer to the fact that doctors make good money.
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So the Engels one just says that profit that comes from imperialism isn't divided equally within the empire, so yeah, no shit and isn't an argument against anything I said.
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Is Mary a labor leader? Is the bribery fully operating? Is she a phillistines also in her mode of life and outlook? Cause it seems at least the outlook is shifting.
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Hate to say it, but who doesn't this apply to in the 1st world?
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Fair point, but for me I'd rather hate than be bitter. Maybe that's just semantics.
Your class determines your revolutionary potential.
That's true in aggregate, but individuals can become revolutionaries, no matter their class
I know many affluent libs that hold very progressive views (and dare I say, genuine about it)
but I also know that they will defend the status quo to the end.
So they're hypocrites and their "progressive views" count for nothing :shrug-outta-hecks:
Yeah they dont until they do something useful. Youre not a good guy if youre rich until you do something. Posting and having right opinions doesnt count as doing something.
When I was in undergrad, I was friends with a group of mostly privileged kids...
Brutal.
Any suggestions?
Marx was an upper class intellectual, Engels was a member of the bourgeoisie so theres that.
I don't see any reason not to hate your "friends" though they sound like a bunch of bloodless soylent-guzzling PMC ghouls who shamelessly virtue signal on FB, despite the awful shit they did in the past. Its pretty sane and good to see them as full of shit until they address what they did imo.
You dont have to worship marx or engels, just because two rich people did a good thing doesnt absolve the rest of rich people even well meaning libs on facebook. I probably wouldnt like them in real life and I recognize that they kind of sucked for being fancy lads.
In my opinion, "doing something" is the bare minimum you can do as a rich leftist, you have all the necessary resources and you squander it to preserve the status quo, have correct opinions on facebook and to have read the right books.
two rich people did a good thing doesnt absolve the rest of rich people even well meaning libs on facebook.
People always highlight how Engels was a member of the bourgeoisie and gloss over the fact that he joined a revolutionary army and almost died in the process. Yes, Engels gets a pass for almost dying in his attempts at putting bullets into the skulls of his fellow bourgeois ghouls.
In 1849, Engels travelled to the Kingdom of Bavaria for the Baden and Palatinate revolutionary uprising, an even more dangerous involvement. Starting with an article called "The Magyar Struggle", written on 8 January 1849, Engels, himself, began a series of reports on the Revolution and War for Independence of the newly founded Hungarian Republic.[62] Engels's articles on the Hungarian Republic became a regular feature in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung under the heading "From the Theatre of War"; however, the newspaper was suppressed during the June 1849 Prussian coup d'état. After the coup, Marx lost his Prussian citizenship, was deported and fled to Paris and then London.[63] Engels stayed in Prussia and took part in an armed uprising in South Germany as an aide-de-camp in the volunteer corps of August Willich.[64][65][66] Engels also brought two cases of rifle cartridges with him when he went to join the uprising in Elberfeld on 10 May 1849.[67] Later when Prussian troops came to Kaiserslautern to suppress an uprising there, Engels joined a group of volunteers under the command of August Willich, who were going to fight the Prussian troops.[68] When the uprising was crushed, Engels was one of the last members of Willich's volunteers to escape by crossing the Swiss border. Marx and others became concerned for Engels's life until they finally heard from him.[69]
That owns that does earn him a pass in my book, even though he seems like a fancy lad piece of shit in all the other areas of his life.
But I also know that I don’t want to be this way because I also hate ppl who make life into an oppression olympics. But I also don’t know how. Any suggestions?
Practical advice: think about a time when you believed something shitty and then changed your mind. I had a lot of chances to quit eating meat and pretty much ignored everyone who told me to stop til my brain clicked a certain way one day and I could internalize it as my idea. If your ex-friends' posts are genuine, they've done the same thing and you may be able to relate to them that way.
I would also be frustrated in your place. I know intellectually that people's beliefs are heavily influenced by their economic position, but it would feel really invalidating to have seen them ignore what you were telling them and now "believe" it based on workplace experience or twitter posts or whatever. Not sure that it'll be healthy for you to engage with em.
don't worry comrade we're both bad in ways we haven't even realized yet. the awful experience of growing only ends when you die
That definitely helps, though it also makes me hate myself more because I’ve had some shit takes lol.
Don't hate yourself for becoming a better person. Unless you've actively harmed a specific person and need to make amends, the only penance you need to do is living your values.
If they're your actual friend and not just on Facebook, talk to them. If it's someone that is only a post on a feed to you now, move on with your life, it's not a bad thing.
Well, sorry to dissapoint that it seems capitalism will outlive the boomers. Like she works in the medical field and is being radicalized by her job. She doesn't own a business as far as you've said, she got a high paying job that probably should be highly paid cause medicine is important and also really difficult. This seems more like your personal beef than anything to do with Marxism.
Wrll don't be upset someone else is realizing it because of your silly personal beef.
