From my POV as “a non-white person deeply sympathetic to racial causes,” that thread is garbage.
Like besides the part where the entirety of the history of the American left is boiled down into one perspective that the author mostly makes up to fit the argument, the failure of the American left is that it failed to engineer a movement for national liberation?
Like the role of socialists is to summon movements for national liberation out of the ether?
Like movements for national liberation are more genuinely “revolutionary” than, say, the October Revolution?
Wow, why do you think there were all these movements for national liberation in nations that were literally colonized and not in the dominant capitalist power? Must have something to do with the left rejecting identity politics, that makes sense, yes.
the role of socialists is to summon movements for national liberation out of the ether?
Historical materialists can uncover the alienation which already exists.
Must have something to do with the left rejecting identity politics
read the thread again
Historical materialists can uncover the alienation which already exists.
Historical materialists can explain the alienation that already exists, and tie it back to class struggle through concrete perspectives. That's the goal of the Marxist approach to the national question. It's not to be the impetus for national liberation movements that the people of said nation are not themselves aware of or undertaking.
read the thread again
No, I don't think I will.
I think the issue is that the US is part of the imperial core, so loving one's country is inherently supporting the subjugation of others.
The real revolution is the destruction of the American ability to wage empire on the rest of the world, not the reform of empire to become a Good Empire. That cannot be understood deeply except through the nationalist identity arising from identification with the colonized.
hmmmmm
Every socialist movement abroad that the America left admires, is centered around a deep commitment to a project of national liberation
Bolshevik revolution wasn't like that though, right?
I'll admit that the white left in the US doesn't know what it's like to be colonized, and that skewers their ability to understand revolutionary struggle in many other places around the world.
But holy fuck can you imagine the alternative? Left-wing white Americans becoming more nationalistic would be an absolute disaster for the rest of the left and the entire Global South. There's no nationalism on the left because the left understands that there's very little about the American state or identity to be proud of.
That's how I feel about Canada at least. If the small scraps of left-wing rabble here were to lean into the Canadian identity, they'd be a) yucky in all the ways the NDP are, and b) trampling harder on the local BIPOC movements, especially the Indigenous ones. I think the movements for sovereignty in Quebec over the last half century really reflect this sort of dynamic; at times, they put a name to class struggle and pointed out that English-speaking people owned all the factories in which French-speaking workers toiled away, but this identity came at the expense of others in the province, including immigrants, first nations, people of colour, Métis, etc.
The only struggle for national liberation that can be supported in the United States and Canada is the liberation of the indigenous people, because they are a people who were colonized.
Meh, that user is saying the US left doesn't understand colonialism and that's a fucking lie.
Depends on how you define the Left. If you include the Bernie Sanders campaign, then it's absolutely true. Inb4 "social fascist".
Third-worldism is an op to give global northerners an excuse not to do direct action. Read it to understand superexploitation and the reality of imperial class structures, but ignore the bits about how white people can't be revolutionaries.
Lol, no doubt you're seeing a bad approximation, but I'm not sure reading the theory really helps. After reading Settlers, for example, I now realize that anyone who says "read Settlers" online either 1) hasn't actually read it themselves, 2) isn't involved in any kind of left project I respect, or 3) is just kind of a dope. Knowing the internet, 90% of the time, it's #1.
This guy defines nationalism as anti-colonial nationalism, which immediately excludes the whole Russian revolution. The Czar and the aristocracy weren't wyte coloniza's of PoC bolsheviks
Also:
You gotta really fucking resent the white man and the history we had to inherit because of him, at some level as a direct personal affront.
This is why there is no real American Left (that is white-led).
Wouldn't the full force of the American state coming down on them have more to do with that, rather than not hating the white man enough?
Good analysis. As I understand it, it's not that it's a moral failing, it's just that it is impossible to be a white American leftist (by this person's definition of leftist).
This was my initial reaction as well, but the original post doesn’t actually have any prescriptions. It’s not telling you to do anything or nothing, it’s just uncovering the reasons why there has not been a real revolutionary movement in America, excluding black liberation movements etc.
white American leftist
unless you "identify with the colonized"...it's Rachel Dolezal time
well actually you know i find my self saying “we” when referring to third world communist movements to others sometimes. maybe i subconsciously already did that
Finding a way to basically separate the bourgeoisie from the national identity in the minds of the proletariat is something I haven't thought about and seems like an interesting strategy at face level, but I would worry that it would be very easy for that to spin off in a more chauvinist direction if a dedicated party doesn't have tight control over the movement, since it could easily stray into (((gLoBaLiSt))) territory. I don't think it's that hard of a sell to paint the bourgeoisie in the US as fundamentally more committed to an international capitalist project rather than the betterment of the US and it's people, though.
I don't think that would work very well because the petit bourgeoisie tends to be quite nationalist in the US. If you end up with people thinking it's only the big time ones that are a problem, seeing the small business owners being nationalist and therefore leaning more towards their side of things politically could easily lead to people not wanting real change.
The movement still has to be centered around the proletariat, but I have been thinking that there is some usefulness in pointing towards how the Walmarts and Amazon's of the world have destroyed local communities/culture, and part of that, while not necessarily raising up local small businesses, would involve not really putting them directly in the crosshairs.
