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/

I'm sure there's plenty of ways to arrive at ultraleftism. One is failing to shed the propaganda you've been fed your entire life, another is trying to triangulate "being on the left" and "being taken seriously by liberals" which necessitates condemning AES, and yet another might be "trying to make money on the maga communism circuit", along with "paid by the FBI".

idk but I hate that "ultra" is a bad thing, I want to be an ultraleftist reading ultratheory and doing ultrapraxis, it sounds dop[e

I think the kindest interpretation of ultras is that they move the line of "what is an acceptable level of mistakes for a country/movement/person/etc to make" all the way to zero. IE: If you have ever done anything wrong ever in history then you are immediately "not ethical" and therefore cannot be part of the leftist movement.

It's a really dumb way of thinking because it is absolutely impossible for any individual to be perfect for their entire existence, let alone a movement or a country. But if you know any real life ultras and talk to them about things, it always boils down to this. They do not do critical support; if there is anything to be critical of at all, then their support does not exist.

I think on some level this makes sense; why should anyone ever accept any injustice whatsoever? It's just not practical unfortunately to live as a human being among other human beings and expect that there will be zero mistakes and zero injustices. They're going to happen. Even in a perfectly utopian communist society mistakes are going to happen. It's not that we should accept ALL injustices, but we cannot expect ZERO injustices. Or we have to change the definition of what it means to accept them. Can someone make a mistake and then go through a restorative justice process? Does that count as "accepting" the injustice, or does it count as working to resolve it? An ultra wouldn't believe in restorative justice, they would say that because an injustice happened the entity that caused it cannot be redeemed and must be utterly destroyed. Ironically I personally believe that the ultra take of "restorative justice is impossible" makes them the actual perpetrators of injustice, but that's just me.

I think the unkind interpretation of ultras is that they're western government plants, which I'm sure at least some of them are.

The other replies in this thread are more specific to ultras, but more generally a lot of the problems with the western/online left stem from reading theory without reading history (and/or direct experience fighting against the mechanisms of capitalism). We might identify as materialists, but it's an idealist materialism, because it's purely identity, existing only in our heads or online.

It's hard to overcome without access to effective orgs, though. Individual action is largely ineffectual and thus usually idealist. Systemic problems have to be engaged with collectively, so without organization the "correct" strategies are entirely hypothetical.

But more and more people are realizing this, I think. Labor organizing is becoming popular again and political orgs are growing. The red-state smallish city I just moved from started a DSA chapter this year and now has 20-30 members (a bunch of whom are MLs). Bevins' recent book seems to be catching on among the western left.

Things are still pretty bleak, but it's a "bad times breed opportunity" kind of bleak rather than a consuming hopelessness.

It seems to attract disillusioned liberals who nominally claim to oppose class society but for whatever reason want western supremacy to somehow endure in the post-class society, it's incoherent but it seems to be the emotional fuel that sustains alot of their hostile left bashing politics

Also despite many ultras making a talismanic fetish out of theory, most of them seem to have never actually read it, over the years I grew more suspicious of these so-called loremasters and came up with three simple questions on theory to determine whether an ultra has read Marx, and I'm not kidding after asking maybe a dozen or more online ultras over the years NONE of them have answered all the questions correctly, most couldn't even answer ONE right

In the end I realized Matt Christman was 100% right, these aren't political movements they're online posting styles centered on a person's idiosyncratic demographic priors and mediated thru online consumption

One thing that I think isn't exclusive to ultraleftists but which is a very influential force in ultraleftism is a purity fetish:

This article on the topic is a banger and it should be mandatory reading for everyone in the radical left.

I think that ultras are a lot like trots in how they essentially believe that you have to arrive at an immaculate position by divining the meaning of Marxist texts in order to achieve The Correct Position™, rather than actually rolling up your sleeves and doing the work to implement theory and to address the inherent contradictions as they emerge in order to make change.

I also think that ultras have a similar tendency to some anarchists in that they adopt an ideological position of negation (and in the case of ultras especially, an intellectual position of negation too) where they can immediately dismiss attempts at revolution or achieving socialism as being somehow insufficient. In some anarchists, you see that with them immediately denouncing anything as "authoritarianism" and ultras take a similar mental shortcut except they use more words and quote more theory. "Hmph, you support Cuba? Read Bordiga's [whatever] and you'll understand why you are wrong, loser."

Honestly so much of it just comes off as cope to me.

Fortunately the price of admission for being an ultraleftist is high - you need to read a lot of theory, the movement is incredibly fractious (mostly because they aren't focusing on achieving an actual, practical outcome through collaboration, and without that people tend to descend into petty bickering rather than developing community and learning to overcome differences through striving together to achieve the same thing), and they have basically relegated themselves to being above it all and separate from it all.

This means they're pretty inconsequential and they're always going to be a fringe element because so much of their, whatever, identity/political position/project is invested in what is essentially armchair quarterbacking (pun intended) and thus they opt to be sidelined as a necessary precondition of being an ultraleftist. When I encounter them I pay them no mind.

Show

Is it lust for gold? Power? Or were you just born with a heart full of ultraleftality?

I have a question: are Trotskyists and ultras distinct?

[Incoming rant]

I have a friend in the UC grad student union (I'm currently not in the country but will be returning relatively soon to a UC myself). We used to live together and he's pretty far left and all, but definitely always been a tad ultra. I was messaging him about orgs to join when I'm back when the craziest encampment action was happening. He said PSL has some members but seem "Stalinist" . He even said several members in his union are from PSL (super cool honestly), but that they were refusing to push the union to actively vote a statement of solidarity with palestine or something. He was critical of them being too bureaucratic about stuff like that.

Then he told me about the Revolutionary Communists of America and said they seem pretty cool . I thought hmmm okay I'll check them out. They were recently founded (insert existential comic joke about leftist parties). They had a podcast and one episode was like "Why we are Leninists" and I was like .

I'm listening and hear a lot of Lenin, Marx, no Stalin though. They say "we get criticism for handing out flyers at protests but that's because we want to build the party to solve all the protests!!1!" . At this point I'm like no pls, next they bring up directly "a lot of people ask if we're 'Trotskyists', haha the internet has such funny slang doesn't it. Well, let's just read what Trotsky said about..." blah blah basically yeah that Stalin re-established class society in USSR etc etc.

So yeah I was pretty burned because it seems the trots get their marketing down pretty well these days. There were a few signs that slipped right past me.

Lurking in the more tankie Chapo discord for a couple years is what had me dangerously close to it lol

Leftist ultras > ultraleftists

Born white

Neolibs ahven't accept the fact they're now Bush Cheney levels of fascists. So you seem "ultra left" for....having empathy and standards. Thier ship of state has already sunk and are in denial.

Go far enough right and eventually you will be ultraleft.

What exactly is the definition of ultraleft? I get the gist and have definitely seen the type, but is there anything specific?