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I agree with you but I wanna ask the deeper question that is really bugging me.
What the fuck is a success? Is it related to the length of time that a radical experiment stays going, its geographic wingspan, or how well it adheres to its principles and for how long?
One could just as easily call the Soviet Union a failure for its downfall at the end of the century as one can call it a success for it's economic accomplishments in the first half.
The point of analyzing things like this dialectically is we learn from the failures and successes of each movement led by the people, as a ML I always will be biased but as comrades we all understand at some level we all need to organize together.
Right, and I guess my main point is "[ideology] doesn't have any historical wins" is deeply subjective take because everyone draws different parameters around what counts as a win. But yeah we need to organize together.
Every success we're likely to see in our lifetimes is going to be a qualified one, just as every failure will be a qualified one. It's more of "these groups of outcomes are worth celebrating/praising and these other groups of outcomes are worth lamenting/damning" than a crystal-clear definition in either direction.
Three examples:
- Say there's a U.S. president who pulls us completely out of Iraq and Afghanistan, who ends our military actions that directly kill people (e.g., our perpetual drone assassination program), who stops supporting actions that directly kill people (e.g., refueling Saudi bombers over Yemen), and who shuts down 30% of our foreign bases. There's a lot of "success" in this scenario -- we're killing fewer people, we're taking meaningful steps towards ending U.S. empire, etc. -- but there would still be tons of work to be done to achieve socialism.
- Say we get M4A but nothing else changes. Again, lots of "success" here, and again, tons of work yet to be done.
- Say we achieve something that could fairly be called socialism. The American government is explicitly a socialist one, we've undone empire in a way that makes that first scenario look amateurish, major industries are nationalized, smaller industries are entirely filled with worker-owned enterprises, all the basics of decent living are fully guaranteed, etc. Absolutely a "success," but we'll still have "failings" when problems occur (and especially when we handle them badly), and we'll still have "failings" where we insufficiently advance the conditions of people this country has historically ground underfoot.
Success is apparently turning the US into scandinavia, good luck with that. I say success is turning the US into Syria.
MLS has had lasting success
The league is only 25 years old. I know the history of soccer in the US is fraught, but it's difficult to call that "lasting success" for Major League Soccer.
(I don't know why I'm like this, but every time I see MLs, I can only think of one joke.)
Sure, the argument that since ML revolutions worked in the past, they will work in the future is overly simplistic. But I don't think it is irrelevant, because there were (very likely) reasons they worked. I would claim the reasons that, for example, democratic centralism and the vanguard party worked are still relevant in the imperial core, and you would need a pretty strong argument to reasonably suggest abandoning them based on their past success. At the very least, a modern revolutionary strategy should have an answer to the problems previously answered by these strategies.
No strategy will ever have been tested in the exact conditions it will be used in, because all conditions are unique in some way. It will always be necessary to extrapolate from past successes and failures.
IMO, if you're trying to dogmatically copy the Bolsheviks (or anyone else) then you aren't even a leninist. Lenin was all about creating the organizational forms that corresponded to the main political tasks of the time. His earliest writings were basically "let's not blindly copy the SPD because it doesn't make sense in our conditions", but over the past 100+ years we've often made that same mistake. Fortunately I think we're starting to make some good progress on this, and that applies to the entire left, certainly not exclusive to MLs.
Compared to 10 or 20 or 30 years ago? Massive progress. Not enough, but now we have things like 1) a few left orgs in basically every city 2) popular media projects with broad reach 3) high-profile elected officials 4) more coordination and less sectarianism between tendencies, among other improvements.
We're not where we need to be, and all of those points have their flaws or limitations, but this is the strongest the left has been in the US in at least 40 years. That says more about how bleak that past was than how great things are now, but it is real and significant progress that we shouldn't dismiss.
And what are we doing do with leftist orgs and Sam Seder youtubes and AOC?
Not enough, but at least we're getting the message out and starting to build consciousness and organization on a large scale. IMO those are the necessary first steps before doing anything else, so it's good to see definite progress in those areas.
Ok and how many divisions have we got? Good vibes don't count.
Ok, well what do you think needs to be done? And do you think that the progress that I've described, even if not sufficient, is helpful in achieving that? And if not what do you propose?
I'm not trying to be argumentative, these are exactly the things we should be thinking through and that should guide our organizing efforts.
I agree, our arguments cannot end at "MLs are the only ones who have experienced success"
But that is an argument we have to make, because many of our detractors refuse to believe that we have any, and we can only move on to debating why it worked when both parties acknowledge that it had even the slightest degree of success
To me, it's an argument of why, in spite of all their shortcomings (either in my privileged lib western eyes, or overall shortcomings) we still need to study historical movements instead of rejecting then based on their imperfections.
It's definitely not saying "it worked there, so let's do that stuff again here"
Does it make someone a centrist if they stan both Thomas Sankara and Rojava? ...Asking for a friend.
And that's fair - but at that point we would want to argue what constitutes a success - for example, the way I see it, the biggest impediment to socialism is the US, not the existence of a state or a vanguard party. Therefore, anything that impedes the US, or holds its attention away from other nations attempting to shift left, deserves critical support, and anything that cannot do so cannot be called a success
Which is why it once had a stranglehold on South America in the past but now can't even coup Bolivia or Venezuela properly? When I say taking away its attention, I don't mean like tapping America on the shoulder and having some revolution in the global south comically tiptoe in the other direction. I mean that America has only a limited amount of resources (even if it feels infinite) and most of those resources (especially those talented at manufacturing consent) are tied up in the Middle East and in Asia, which has caused the stranglehold on South America and Africa to loosen up a little.
America is a disgustingly powerful nation, no doubt. But to say that it is so powerful that any action taken against it is worthless is nothing but pointless doomerism.
which has caused the stranglehold on South America and Africa to loosen up a little
I guess when something loosens up a little its just irrevocably gone now and forever
This is untrue though. A ML party won elections in Cyprus for instance. Prior to Crimean annexation, Ukraine also had a significant ML party. In several other Euro countries, ML parties are needed to complete left wing coalition governments. I also disagree with writing off the third world - "not counting your successes, you have never succeeded!". Several Indian communist provinces come to mind, a country whose political system resembles the west. The argument remains sound into the 21st century.
which is a situation very hard to analogize in the imperial core
This is something I think about a lot, previous revolutions we look at are rooted against feudal states (USSR, China) or against imperialism (Vietnam, Korea) in ways that aren't seen in the imperial core in the 21st century. With how American presidents work, we can't replicate anger towards the King/royal family as a starting point. Instead we have to explain to people who frankly benefit from capitalism that capitalism must be destroyed
My uneducated blueprint of priorities for American leftists:
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Protecting oppressed people living in the imperial core. Mutual aid & community protection programs are good examples. Maybe fights for healthcare as well? Idk
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Organizing a worker's party of sorts, political education & agitation. DSA is doing some of this, though most people are attempting democratic entryism. Entryism seems to have had some successes as a platform for educating people about the left considering how attached many Americans are to politics, though I think this is limited to upper classes so probably not a long term strategy. I hope entryism can be abandoned at some point in favor of organizing around an independent party positioned explicitly against democrats.
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Sabotaging imperialist aims. Attempting to preventing American imperialist wars through direct action as well as education on solidarity with the attacked. Agitating for mass anti-war movements the next time it inevitably happens. This will probably have to include getting liberals (yuck) on the street like during Vietnam. Hopes very low here too given the failure of anti-war movements in the last 2 decades.
OP to your point I agree about the need to kinda set aside the American ML utopia. Because the above strategies aren't really ML specific at all, they're shared by anarchists too! (Right?)
But most importantly, this blueprint is unique to the US / western imperial core countries - it probably looks very different in revolutionary Russia, and it certainly looks very different in today's India.
I debated deleting this because I have no idea what I'm talking about lmao but I'm leaving it because I'm curious to hear disagreements.
Most of my political education has probably been from posting cringe and being told so. (This is not a good thing but still)
Precariat is becoming the primary class in the imperial core. Organizing on the heels of union strikes worked for Lenin and the Bolsheviks because the power lay with the proletariat and their proximity to the means of production.
That isn't the primary conflict anymore. The source of most organizing is service related work. Nurses, teachers, and the precariat class working odd jobs and unable to unionize because of alienation from their co-workers. It's gonna be a lot harder and a lot different organizing these forces. The BLM protests showed that it's possible though. That there is anger and power lying dormant in us. No matter how much they try and sperate us and alienate us, we will still have that collective power.
I haven't considered this take enough. It's really accelerating too.
Your comment makes me want to look into / help organize a rideshare union, (NLB approved or not). You're right that there's potential there. Like a mass distribution of rideshare agitprop pamphlets is not such an impossible idea. For the few times I do use rideshare, drivers are so often bored as fuck and willing to have real deep and personal discussions. On the other hand as I understand it there are very few rideshare drivers that "identify" with the job, so there's naturally less unity there. Which I suppose yeah, that's what the nature of the precariat has always been, and why the uniting power of the proletariat have historically been the deciding factor in movements.
It's a good question and I'm not sure, but I was thinking along the lines of what BPP was doing. Which ranged from free breakfasts for kids to basically creating their own community police force. So I suppose not far from creating an army lol
It's difficult to compare though, as I understand it cops & white people were even more aggressive toward black neighborhoods back then so the need was maybe more obvious.
I realize my post was vague, it was vague because I just honestly don't know
If the wh*tes are less aggressive now (they aren't, neoliberal policies are used to diffuse responsibility instead), then we should exploit that.
Oh yeah I agree with you, capitalism is harsh as fuck on black communities today too. You put it better than I, I was referring exactly to the diffused responsibility of neoliberalism. It's harder and more confusing to organize a BPP army against "neoliberalism" than physical wh*tes coming at you with guns. I agree we should exploit this shit, but I don't know how. Tenant unions & eviction resistance are great though. This is probably where some of the most egregious state violence happens today.
political education & agitation
This is a good list overall, and this bit touches on it to an extent, but we need an explicit goal to be "get more people to openly, meaningfully call themselves leftists."
If every single leftist who currently exists in this country was perfectly organized into whatever your ideal leftist project looks like, and was active in pursuing that project, it still wouldn't be enough. We needs tens of millions of more of us, at minimum.
“get more people to openly, meaningfully call themselves leftists.”
Nice, this is sounds relatively easy. But yeah I agree.
My brother said "how could someone openly call themselves a communist in 2020?" We'll get there. Lmao. The genius response I thought of in the shower later was "HOW COULD SOMEONE CALL THEMSELVES A CAPITALIST??"
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Well put. Any sound theory for overthrowing capitalism in the imperial core has to be based on practice in the imperial core. We can (and should) be informed by practice and theory from successful revolutions in the imperial periphery, but this practice took place under different circumstances, and the resulting theory remains a hypothesis until it is put into practice and adapted to our own.
closest thing the west ever had to a prole revolution was when germany invaded france... twice
commune of paris first, then the communist party had 40% of the vote tally after ww2 at one point. idk if spain would be considered the west in this take, as dynamics were different back then, but hey if you count that they certainly had a big revolution but it didnt succeed. and if you count spain, you could look at portugal as well. they had a revolution that was socialist in name but is neolib as hell rn.
Is there a particular reason to not include the German revolution/uprisings? Kinda just feels odd if almost winning a bourgeoise election is included as an almost/close to a revolution.
ruthlessly stomped before achieving any long lasting power but sure. the socialist state of bavaria lasted like 1 month i think but was mostly confined to munich
has to be based on practice in the imperial core
decolonize America
May you elaborate please? Don’t mean to JAQ off, I just am curious about decolonizing one of the largest setter states in the world.
The main problem with that debate is that (well read) anarchists and MLs have a very different definition of success so i try to bail any of those debates as soon as i can, since i'm not here to push an agenda and it's completely unproductive.
I was under the impression that at least in the US / western imperial core, MLs and anarchists have relatively similar definition of success. What makes you think otherwise? If you're referring to colonized nations though I agree.
MLs and anarchists in the core are functionally identical right now. The only real criticism you can have is organizing style. Even then that's different from group to group regardless of "tendency". There's no reason to not work together.
Maybe IRL it's that way, i was referring to this site specifically since i'm not from the imperial core and don't experience sectarian bs irl that goes above the level of well meaning shitposts.
On this site though there are debates every week about whether anarchists ever saw success mainly started by MLs who point at the USSR as a successful ML revolution. Which is fine, even though the USSR isn't around anymore since it took over the state. On their terms this is a success and i accept that. But anarchists are looking to do away with the state right away, so they will view that as the standard of success. And on that scale for example Catalonia was a success since they ditched the government (and them reformed it, which is a heavy critique against them). Makhnovist Ukraine was a success since they abolished governments. And even squats like Exarchia or the ones in Barcelona are success since they create bubbles of autonomy where the state has no say. So both sides have their successes and projecting one's terms onto the other movement is useless, making a "my revolution lasted longer" thing out of it is basically a dick measuring contest.
Again, i meant specifically this site cause i don't know how it goes there irl.
OK the imperial core - so were imperial core tactics propagated by Marxist-Leninist parties correct in the 20th century?
Well in 1991 we discovered what the US had been doing through NATO. Funding and arming fascists to discredit Communist movements which involves them doing terrorist attacks then blaming them on the Communists to discredit and alienate them.
In Daniele Gansers, NATOs Secret Armies he documents exactly how effective the tactics of the Communist parties were in Britain, France, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxumberg, Denmark, Norway, Germany and Greece.
In fact were it not for the United States both France and Italy probably would've gone Communist after ww2. The US had to intervene directly to have elected communists removed from power multiple times in France and Italy. The US also intervened publicly via the Marshall Plan to essentially give money to European countries to rebuild and in doing so did in a way to isolate the progressive elements of humanity.
Daniele Ganser NATOs Secret Armies
William Blums Killing Hope also has chapters on these CIA interventions which are now coupled with the our knowledge of the fascists the US was supporting and arming
Having so utterly smashed the Left via these undemocratic and totalitarian methods which involved murdering innocent people to blame on Communists to create a " strategy of tension"
The US had to do this precisely because of the effectiveness of Marxist-Leninists.
So even in the imperial core the fascist United States had to resort to arming and funding far right groups that would commit terror attacks all over Europe to retain ideological hegemony. https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_Gladio
And I don't really think you can blame the lack of success in the 21st century on MLs....We only exited the "end of history period" in 2008 at which period the US had absolute ideological supremacy and hegemony.
US ideology and alliance looks like dogshit to most people outside of US today.
JS, this site would be immeasurably improved if it was just your posts in blog format :fidel-salute:
In the imperial core, tankies have had just as much success as anarkiddies
The liberation of Italy, France, and Germany during WWII were led by communists. This led to the construction of a proletarian state in Germany, and a struggle between dual power in France and Italy for decades following the war.
The number of conditions you are adding to obfuscate the objective truths in Marxism-Leninism is really annoying.
objective truths
All forms of leftism have objective truths, like capitalism being bad
Then analyze the conditions unique to the imperial core, and adapt the tactics & strategy of Marxism-Leninism to these conditions.
We need to build off proven successes, and reject proven failures.
The liberation of Italy, France, and Germany during WWII were led by communists. This led to the construction of a proletarian state in Germany, and a struggle between dual power in France and Italy for decades following the war.
This is right, but I don't think it says anything about the viability of the ML approach for U.S. leftists in 2021. This isn't a useful comparison unless we're holding out hope for China conquering the U.S. -- which itself would mean U.S. MLs (and every U.S. leftist group) failed to create American socialism.
Also, when this statement is used does ML include MLMs, because the NPA is doing pretty fucking solid.
Tankie here,
nice try liberal
Marxists should look at the concrete situation and adapt to it
decolonize America
Seems like a lot of people to cram into a country the size of Texas
Alright, maybe a few people could chill in Portugal too, they would probably not mind.
The FBI killed the black Panthers so you just gotta vote harder now, if you try to do anything more than charity then you're just asking for it
Avoiding surveillance? We should make a video of masked troops swinging off monkey bars at a training camp
It would be lots of cool Swedish 60s socialism before inevitably becoming a middle ground of imperialist social democracy (AKA not really a middle ground)
