cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/2139382

It seems most cross tendency engagement devolves in to fights between leftcoms/anarchists vs AES supporters or “Dengists” vs Maoists. Anyone can point at each other and say “they started it” and avoid responsibilities. We agree on 90% of stuff but Anarchists decide to randomly call us tankies and we feel the need to defend ourselves or else look like we lost without an argument. Likewise we make memes about Anarkiddies and write texts denouncing them and they feel the same. Among scientific socialists we see China as an ally and an example to learn from while Maoists want to call out “revisionism.” There seems to be a contradiction between the history of different socialist experiments and disagreements not really mattering to our own conditions and those experiments also being vital learning experiences for us.

It’s strange to think about how we pretty much agree with Patsocs on more than almost any other tendency yet they are almost useless because they don’t understand the basic dialectical method and why have our positions beyond aesthetics and thus cannot understand the basic material conditions of this country.

We can keep trying to bring more people into our own sects and hope they do work for our own type of socialism irl, but if we’re so divided how can this happen. Of course we should all just log off and do things irl, but then some will fall into the trap of either larping or just helping their own friends without the wider goal of revolution.

We all need to remember that the feds let us speak because we spend all our time bickering. How can we unify as a revolutionary left? There are projects irl for trying to find unity as scientific socialists like ChunkaLuta, but it would be nice to be able to do the same online. In a way I’m just wishing everyone could just listen to revleft and everything could work out, but what can Lemmygrad and hexbear do for this vision?

  • emizeko [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    aimixin on left unity

    "Left unity" is pointless. If you have a total of 5 leftists in your country, it doesn't matter if they all unify, they're still powerless. People seem to have this delusion that if only Marxists and anarchists stopped fighting, they could come together in countries like the US and take power, but in reality, this is more likely to be the result.

    It's also completely backwards. No revolution has been carried out by only class conscious communists. Communists have to learn how to appeal to the masses, and the masses then have to support it. This is the problem, the highly class conscious communists will always be in small numbers, and will never have the numbers on their own, even if they all unify together.

    Historically, the socialists and communists that come to power are rarely even the result of "unity", but it's always one specific section overtakes everyone else by storm. That's because some organization figures out a way to rally the masses, and once you get the masses on your side, all other organizations get in line or get destroyed.

    The problem is not lack of left unity, but lack of any organizations that have figured out a way to rally the masses. Nobody has figured out how to overcome all the anti-communist brainwashing and to have a message that appeals. It's only been successful in colonized countries but not in the colonizer countries.

    People who act like there's some simple solution that we're just all too stupid to see, like, "if we just all stopped fighting we'd win the revolution!" are not appreciating just how difficult the problem is. The reason communists have not succeeded in colonizer countries is not because they're all missing something "so simple", but because the problem is fucking hard, and they have a mountain to climb.

    • SkeletorJesus [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don't know who aimixin is, but I think this is a pretty bad take. Sure, left unity isn't a magic bullet. We won't have communism tomorrow just because we stop fighting. We do need to convince a larger mass to work with us. But you know what? It's a lot easier to write off the person at work raving about anarcho-lenin-trotsky thought as just some lunatic if they're the only one. If you double the amount of communists, each one has to convince half as many people. This line of logic presents the idea that a group of 5 people is as able to effect change as a group of 500, and that's simply not true unless you buy into great man theory bullshit. You don't need to cede trans rights in order to convince a grand total of 4 people, certainly, but cutting out a quarter of us because of what color we'll paint our rocket ships after establishing FALGSC is stupid and counterproductive. I genuinely cannot believe a communist would be unable to see the power and necessity in solidarity.