My two cents on how to achieve left unity:
Anarchists: Stop using the word tankie. It pushes your fellow leftists away and pisses them off. Instead make specific criticisms of communist countries. ESPECIALLY stop calling MLs “red fash”. There is already enough misinformation going around about fascism.
Marxist-Leninists: Embrace critical support. Be willing to criticize and accept criticism of nations like China, the Soviet Union, and especially North Korea. Remember that being against US imperialism is not the only thing that makes a country good.
If you call me (or anyone who’s not literally a Pol Pot supporter or something) “red fash,” you’re probably getting temp banned.
all cops are bastards
I was tempted to for jokes but I didn't want to risk getting temp banned from my chapo :stalin-stressed:
A lot of accusations against China are Western propaganda. The concept that China might do something wrong is not Western propaganda.
Edit: I'm not saying "tankies" deny that China is capable of wrongdoing, but acknowledging that fact is what the post is asking, not that you repeat any particular anti China point.
Yeah. People make dumb, hyperbolic points about China all the time.
But people also make much more measured and reasonable points, and those points get blown up and treated as though they were the same as the hyperbolic bullshit.
I made no argument against delicate or nuanced critiques
Chapo Chat, like /r/cth, is an enemy of dirtbag leftists
I don't really disagree with your actual claims, but your original comment is an example of what I was talking about. All the post said was, "xyz countries can be criticized" and you escalated that by treating it as though you were being asked to accept everything the BBC has to say about foreign policy.
Sure, but from the text of the post and from your description of what you already believe, you're not being asked to change your ideology.
That's fair enough, but a better response would be to point that out instead of the knee jerk response of assuming the asker is being disingenuous. We all have the same goals here.
If you're interested in people understanding you and knowing what you mean, you'd best say what you mean instead of saying the opposite for "snark" purposes.
When it comes to the worse anti-China points, I find it kind of funny how leftists will consistently and correctly point out how people are living in an incredibly effective propaganda machine, and then get extremely mad and upset when someone falls for that exact propaganda. Like, no shit, that's how it works. Argue the facts, yes, but don't pretend someone's a bad person because they're convinced a genocide is happening and, based on that conviction, try to oppose it.
It is literally impossible to not fall for some sort of propaganda machine if you keep up with news from anywhere. The word propaganda doesn't mean something isn't true, but it's written in a way that pushed an idea forward.
You should always question the motives of any and all journalists out there. Because they all have them and they aren't all pure of heart.
I'm saying anarchists aren't the only ones who don't do that. You see MLs take Russian, Chinese or Venezuelan state media at it's word too.
The point is facts aren't a relevant in any part of the equation in the world of geopolitics. It's just what you can get people to believe.
This said when you see some baby leftist retweet something that clearly came from radio free asia I cringe every time.
"Every state is bad" is not an unreasonable conclusion to draw based on the current conditions of the world
From the proposition that all states are bad, it becomes much easier to believe any particular accusation against a state.
But if leftists know it's being done and that it works, how can leftist be willing to push it? I became more and more of a tankie, the more I read. All while seeing all these gotcha posts on rcompleteanarchy with the uhygur train prisoners.
Whenever I argue for China I start with: there is no perfect government. There probably never will be. But what China /USSR accomplished, based on their material conditions, are/we're great.
When a leftist doesn't want to see that, fine. But please, don't criticize from your Trevor Noah libbrain pov.
Anarchists, especially Western ones, are incredibly idealist. They always approach criticism from the lense of "how things should be" instead of "how they were then, and how they are now". Socialism is a process and you can't just dissolve a state because some people think it should be dissolved. You need to apply a huge amount of organized violence to the state for it to be crushed or even just taken over.
noooooo!!!!!! you can't just dissolve a state because some people think it should be dissolved!
You need to apply a huge amount of organized violence to the state for it to be crushed or even just taken over
lmao whose the idealist one now? Everyone knows the point of communism is to organize the working class so that when capitalism's acceleration of its crises reaches a breaking point, the people can take the reins.
You seem to have missed the part about material analysis and a look at the past and present. Show me a revolution that succeed without applying violence to the state.
Tanks at least are cool, Red Fash is (like imo "Social Fascist" outside of something like full Strasserism) an incoherent category that prevents proper critical discussion of the actual material differences.
It also could be people joining who don't have the exact same views as the people you are thinking of from before. Combined with people who were previously quiet getting more vocal, and people who were more vocal getting more quiet. I know I tend not say anything negative about people who are doing good less efficiently than I think they could because I'd rather they be kinda inefficient than discourage them from acting at all.
I was always extremely skeptical of Bernie, not really trusting him or thinking he or most of the people who supported him so vocally had quite the right idea, but I never said much about it because I didn't want to get in the way of what was ultimately still a good thing. I suspect a lot of people felt the same way, I feel similarly about a lot of things, and behave the same way in response.
have critisisms of NK or China
good thing they say about these countries
every single percieved or real bad thing
Marxism is not moralistic! Even considering particular policies as "good" or "bad" is misleading. The actual question is "is ______ giving power to the proletariat?"
cant handle the fact that communists would support Dengist China and DPRK like Bernie shows a double standards and ideological incoherency
The difference is that Bernie is the only socialist politician, where those states have long histories of virtue signalling their communism. Deng literally had the audacity to call himself communist despite removing Marx
I used to judge anarchists pretty harshly until I read some David Graeber and thought about how there isn't a country in the world that is truly accepting of migrant populations despite how incredibly beneficial they would be.
Climate refugees need a place to go, and I don't care if nations fall to accommodate them. Sea Peoples 2.0 have my uncritical support.
I see these calls for left unity pretty often and as an ML and former anarchist I want to maybe give some insight as to why they always seem to be pretty hollow and unpersuasive. Basically, they amount to calls for these segments of the left to stop being mean to each other without really acknowledging that there is a real, substantive, and irreconcilable political difference between these two camps. One views the Dictatorship of the Proletariate as necessary, the other sees it as inherently counter-revolutionary and would vow to overthrow it. Sure, in the imperial core nations where the left is tiny and mostly powerless, these differences never manifest outside of heated discussion, but if the left starts making any serious gsins these two camps will split pretty quick and be completely opposed to each other.
I think there is too much focus on what the state will be or not be post-revolution, which is worth pondering, but at this point amounts to navel gazing. We should be focused on revolutionary praxis where I think there is more shared vision.
What mostly rubs anarchist the wrong way is the insistence on democratic centralism. but what does discipline matter when if the Party is not in power? it is ultimately a voluntary association between individuals with no way for any of them to enforce discipline beyond social pressure -- which is pretty standard fare for an anarchist. So there is no reason to bicker over the approach, when everyone is ultimately acting under voluntary association.
And it is fairly sensible to take a vote within a group on group actions, but maintaining also that it's better to let people who really object to participating in something skip the parts they find objectionable without being totally excommunicated. A little flexibility on both sides and there is no reason anarchists and communists can't work together towards revolutionary praxis, since no one really has any authority to wield in the first place.
Perhaps there would be tension as one gets very near to a revolution, but I don't see that being the case for quite a ways, we need to raise class consciousness dramatically before that is even worth considering. There is no reason not to be united around that goal. If we are to be successful, many many more people that the current anarchists and communists will have to be involved, and the consensus on the approach may be much clearer by then.
I also don't see any value to argue over what this country did or that country did in the 20th century. We don't have to re-create what they did, nor likely could we if we tried. both because of being in the imperialist core, because of being under a condition of late capitalism, and because of having at least ostensibly a liberal democracy where elections occur with a peaceful transfer of power (though that tradition might be coming to an end!)
Even arguing over what is currently happening in China or DPRK isn't helpful. Until we are to a point of deciding if we need to choose international allies for support, like real support, getting supplies (weapons), economic sanctions, intelligence, state-level hacking -- whatever true "support" might look like coming from China or from Latin America -- it is mostly just of academic interest whether China is state capitalist or true worker's state of is or whatever else. It's not worth dividing the left over these kinds of squabbles, and any kind of "solidarity" measures (e.g. a resolution to support this state or that group) are not likely to accomplish anything of material benefit for either side, so best to avoid those minefields entirely.
Finally, I sometimes see ML's smug about "well this would have never happened with an ML org practicing DemCen" ok you're right, in fact, it wouldn't have happened at all because that ML org doesn't exist. Why has no one created it? Because most people are not interested in getting involved with an org where they feel people are bossing them around, even if those people are right.
Maybe imagine how there is or could be a pipeline to a more disciplined approach like ML, after people have first been involved in more approachable, softer leftist ideas like anarchism or democratic socialism. Expect that some of them will mature in their views and realize that it is not possible to herd cats to a revolution. But surely they'll be much less likely to reach that conclusion if they feel ridiculed or mocked.
I think people think that the alternative to "left unity" is actively promoting infighting which I don't think is the case. Left unity is a pipe dream (imo) but that is just because, as a Marxist, I see Marxism as a science that is emprically sound and correct. Still, I recognise that I, myself, am a product of the lib --> radlib --> ML pipeline so I think we should promote a culture that isn't hostile to people that aren't Marxists, but also doesn't promote a liberal idea of ideology where anarchists and MLs differing only over "aesthetics" or "authoritarianism" or whatever when it is actually modes of thought with different class characters.
People who say Left Unity have confused politics
While in reality most "leftists" reject the dictatorship of the proletariat which is basically conditional on being a Marxist
In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap-heap.
Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
-Engels
The question then arises: What transformation will the state undergo in communist society? In other words, what social functions will remain in existence there that are analogous to present state functions? This question can only be answered scientifically, and one does not get a flea-hop nearer to the problem by a thousand-fold combination of the word 'people' with the word 'state'.
Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
- Marx, critique of the gotha programme
Now, since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist.
-Engels, Letters to Bebel
This is a non-starter for me because I don't just want to "resist neoliberalism," people have been doing that for decades. What inspires me is the idea that I am actively building the socialist future, and if you are a Marxist that is done in the context of the party. I am done with big tent DSA type orgs because without a consistent ideology, you honestly can't make an organisation that will pose a threat to capital because your actions will end where your internal disagreements begin (so for anarchists and MLs, anything more than anti-fascism and anti-capitalism creates discord).
if the left starts making any serious gsins these two camps will split pretty quick and be completely opposed to each other.
Actually, I think history shows the opposite: actual, material struggle for those gains has a tendency to bring everyone together and make the sorts of concessions to material needs that other revolutionary projects have made seem justified. Just look at the shift in the Bolsheviks over the course of the civil war, or how the CCP during the revolution was a coalition largely filled with and run by peasant anarchists and how their ideology shifted afterwards in the face of the actual material conditions they found themselves in.
That's not to say every single sectarian ideologue would drop the infighting (because there were certainly always holdouts) just that, for example, someone's going to start believing in full purges or suppressions of, say, monarchists and everyone who tacitly supports monarchists (like liberals) when the monarchists have literally been doing pogroms and burying people alive, even if that means you've got to toss them in prisons and you think that prisons are something inherently wrong.
One views the Dictatorship of the Proletariate as necessary, the other sees it as inherently counter-revolutionary and would vow to overthrow it
those are just tankies pre-revolution and post-revolution
what do you mean? MLs (as you put it, "tankies") support the DoP pre and post revolution
Be willing to criticize and accept criticism of nations like China, the Soviet Union, and especially North Korea.
We criticise and discuss those all the time
Take Espresso Stalinists page which is a great place for leaning and where you can read detailed critiques of actually existing socialist countries
https://espressostalinist.com/marxism-leninism-versus-revisionism/
However the "criticism" you refer to is basically other leftists repeating imperialist lies as truth like "million uyghurs in camps wah" or the "millions in gulags" (if we were back in Stalins day)
Now we know that the US imprisoned more people per capita than the Soviets did (at the height of the gulag period on the eve of ww2!!!)
thats just another detail down the memory hole - the stick was used to beat MLs and their support for the USSR back then and can be safely discarded now the Soviet Union has collapsed
I mean iron front radlibs calling every hammer/sickle a tankie is getting gross.
It really is that simple. The second someone brings up the fact that (AutHoRiTarIan ReGimE) did something right, you've got all sorts of nerds crawling out of the woodwork to tut tut some imperfect revolution.
Revolution is messy and "authoritarian" and ignoring that is silly. What isn't silly is understanding the historical context within which these revolutions occurred and doing our best to learn from history.
I'm fucking sick of hearing about your pet issue with early 20th century wars, and I'm doubly sick of hearing white people tell me that "everything would be fine if we just got rid of the current iteration of the dominant state" while conveniently ignoring most third world revolutions
Don't call people social fascists. It's as dumb as calling an ML a red fascist.
The ML understanding of fascism is not that "evil fascism" comes out of nowhere
But is a twin pillar to Social Democracy with fascism being an option and the fighting arm of the booj
Whats more Social Democratic nations will inevitably pull out this "option" during capitalist crisis
SocDems were as good as running the empire as conservatives ever were (British or American empire)
Whats more it is SuccDems that export fascism (through violent coups/wars/bombings and subjugation) in the 3rd world. But these fascist tactics always come back home - which is why you see US police become more and more militarised
A Bernie bro crowing about healthcare whilst the imperialist war machine carves up the third world is a social fascist
Bernie himself voted to destroy Yugoslavia with round the clock 78 day bombing campaign...a socialist country
He is a social fascist
Now i deliberately limit useage of this phrase for the same reason the comintern did in the 30s... Because its inflammatory, provocative and divisive and the USSR was hoping for an alliance with the SuccDems against Hitlerite fascism
But the SuccDems proved the communists correct on that phenomena then aand since the 1930s we have almost a century of well documented phenomena of Social-fascism - social democracy being a key pillar of capitalist society that defers to fascism whenever it feels capitalism is under threat
So many people on the left, and in this community in particular, have this ridiculous view of reality where everything is either completely good or completely bad, and the way to determine whether something is good or bad is by forming associations with other things and seeing how many of those associated things are good or bad.
There's literally no conception of the fact that people can take the same premises to different conclusions that are also reasonable, and any deviation from my exact ideas and thought process is seditious brainwashing.
When someone starts with the sincerely held principles that we ought to secure a decent living for everyone, achieve racial justice, eliminate inequality, etc, it's wrong to get mad at them for the conclusions they draw (within reason).
edit: This sounds like the tired liberal bipartisan lines (e.g. "we have to reach across the aisle and find common ground"), and that's because it is. Democrats and Republicans have the same values, those being the preservation of capitalist power structures, so they practice the dreaded "civility." Among the left, we also have the same values, so civility is a rule internally only. In interactions with non leftists, civility ought to be practiced if it advances our goals.
Fucking this. The power of the left is in our care and empathy, that empathy gives us the ability to fight for what's right and help those around us. This builds networks, strengthens relationships and shows the world that we don't need to subscribe to a capitalist mindset.
Anarchist or ML, you know that community organisation is foundational. We can sort out the kitty gritty later, for now we need to work together to build our base and begin to push an anti-capitalist agenda.
I've long thought the only way for leftists to get any real success is we need new ideas injected into leftist philosophy. Neo-marxism or neo-anarchism. There's definitely parts of marxism and anarchism that appeals broadly to the working class today, but there's enough of it as well that they don't want. In a country that has some level of freedom of association, there's no reason far left party membership is as low as it is. You can blame decades of propaganda, and yes that is true. But without injecting new ideas into the far left I really don't think it's realistic to expect a sudden explosion of marxism or anarchism. In my opinion, we need a new leftist doctrine unique to the 21st century.
I think the post is good advice but characterizing it as "how to achieve left unity" is too bold
There's a reason right wing governments come to and stay in power. They recognise that while the don't agree with everything centrists or fascists believe, they are a unified force when they work together and can maintain power. Sure, each group would throw the other under the bus (except maybe centrists, they'll just boot lick the winner), but they know that holding power is more important.
The left have ideals, which is where the issue lies. All sides have strong ideals that they are unwilling to grind or compromise on. It's our strength and our weakness. It means that we can be morally consistent but always end up fighting before the power is won.
We need the red and the black to work together. We're amazing at fighting together against something (see Antifa), but terrible at fighting for anything, which is needed in a revolution.
It's up to the individual to find the line of compromise, but we need to do something or face being a perpetually reactive force.
