- cross-posted to:
- politics
- cross-posted to:
- politics
You must log in or register to comment.
“We can disagree on whether ultraleftist is a helpful term, seeing as it is best defined by an “I know it when I see it” approach.”
This article is incoherent at best.
Beyond that sentence and some of the Bernie/DSA stuff it is pretty much true, as in that is an actual phenomenon that is happening and it isn't super helpful.
Yeah I can read the article and try and deduce my own points are about what they’re trying to say, but that’s not how arguments work. A clear point must be made to be argued for or against
Did you read it past that sentence? It's about the phenomenon of people being "radicalised" through the internet thinking they can just skip over everything and become the One True Leftist by ignoring and sneering at everyone else, or calling for stuff that seems radical to them without properly judging the situation. The result is that they might as well not have been radicalised because they're not working with anyone and are not somehow translating their beliefs into meaningful action. Don't you know people like that?
Yes I know condescending assholes who don’t have conversation in good faith and assume shit about people their talking to.
I'm sorry, from the start of this conversation you don't appear to care too engage. I have no clue what kind of response you were expecting tbh, I don't think any kind of response would make a difference. The article is right there, you can engage or you can pretend to not understand it.
If you stopped this cringy passive-aggressive shtick it would help you to communicate better.
In the contemporary US left, this phrase refers broadly to the amalgamation of anti-capitalists whose entire ideological motivation and self-conception is that they are “to the left” of XYZ, typically DSA. While there are organizations that participate in this sort of branding, it is most commonly done on an individual level. We can disagree on whether ultraleftist is a helpful term, seeing as it is best defined by an “I know it when I see it” approach, but I think the title applies to enough of a grouping that it is worthwhile. Terminally online, constantly accusing others of being sheepdogs or sellouts, and rarely working with others to expand the socialist movement through mass action are some of their calling cards. Their actions speak to wanting to be King of the Smallest Kingdom.
Makes plenty of sense in context.
The libs already discovered Tankie, I hate to think what will happen when they find out about Ultraleft.
Fuck, I thought this was taking about ultras as a term that exists to describe a specific tendency of morons who forget that the world exists and material conditions and social momentum is a thing.
What's the level of irony at which "ultra-leftist" is used as a pejorative against Leninists by anarcho-liberals/traditional ultras?
MATERIAL CONDITIONS MATERIAL CONDITIONS MATERIAL CONDITIONS MATERIAL CONDITIONS
DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM
Look mom, Im doing a Marxism!
Rn i'm a marxist leninist maoist stalinist socialist bolshevik tankie ultra leftist antifa super soldier. You haven't even seen my final form :agony-limitless:
Its the oldest game in the book: the lib to ultra left back to lib pipeline.
The liberal-to-ultraleft pipeline is often accompanied by an obsession with labels that have no applicability outside of branding on internet forums. What’s the difference between a De Leonist, Council Communist and a Syndicalist when none are able to fill the room they reserved at the library with working people?
Good fucking point.
This also applies to electoral abstentionists, many of whom were loudly and proudly part of the mass support for democratic socialist candidates in the past. These newly radicalized liberals then abandon the very mass work that brought them and countless others into the movement in favor of “more radical tactics.” The obsession with radical tactics comes from the fact that liberals believe that they had always been armed with the right morality and analysis but had simply lacked the right tools to succeed.
Electoral politics is a great mass radicizing tool if nothing else. It's foolish to ignore it or exclusively support fringe candidates.
Entryism has had more success in the past five years than fringe candidates have had in the last century.
What practical advances have the BLM protests accomplished? Have laws changed? Have police budgets been cut? Have murderous cops been brought to justice?
They accomplished precious little because the people who have the power to do these things still suck. We're not going to get any lasting changes made so long as local Democrats are third-hand Mayo Petes and national Democrats are John Hickenlooper clones. Entryism has made real progress in replacing those people, which is a prerequisite to improving anything.
It's more likely to happen than a revolution for sure, and it's probably more likely to happen than an approach relying on organized labor, too.
Everything's a long shot, but we have some DSA-endorsed people in office already, and there are historical examples of legislation that's eased the burden on workers.
The goal is a worker's state. There's evidence that you can make real progress towards this by winning elections -- look at Venezuela and Bolivia. And seeing as it's totally unrealistic to expect a revolution any time soon, and only marginally more realistic to expect an unprecedented (in America) level of organized labor power that leads to a solution, the many problems with electoral politics seem by far the most manageable.
No historical legislation easing the burden on workers has made it easier to achieve socialism.
If you take the boot off people's necks -- even just a little bit -- you've done two things to get us closer to socialism. First, you show people political improvements are possible (this is huge in a country that's so pervasively cynical about politics). Second, you give people more time/money/protection for further political activity.
And all of that is on top of the immediate material gain of whatever the "take the boot off the neck" improvement is by itself.
Venezuela and Bolivia aren't worker's states, but they're making progress in that direction, and they've done so despite significant opposition. They're not perfectly analogous to the U.S. in 2021, but they're probably a closer comparison than Cuba in 1959 or Russia in 1917.
I'm not denying that there are problems with electoral politics. You bring up plenty of good points. But the bottom line is that the other paths to socialism are even less likely to come to fruition.
When have the ruling interests really been scared of the US left? It hasn’t been often.
You know when they were most scared of the left? Under FDR. They didn't organize the Business Plot against the Black Panthers; they just shot them.
Of come on, FDR did not strike fundamental fear into the capitalist class.
They planned a coup. They planned to dismiss any pretense of democratic government. That's far more serious than domestic repression (which predated the Business Plot and would have continued after).
I'm fine with non-electoral organizing and action. We should be pursuing every available avenue because no one knows for sure how to build socialism in the imperial core. What I oppose is dismissing the most visible and effective electoral strategy. It's not great, but it's a better bet than anything else.
And didn’t try to execute it as they could see he wasn’t a fundamental threat to their interests.
What stopped the coup was the guy they recruited to lead it -- Smedley Butler. He blew the whistle on the whole thing because he had developed strong anti-imperialist politics by that point in his life. It wasn't shelved, it got revealed.
And yes, plotting to forcibly overthrow the President of the United States of America is a far more serious reaction than persecuting anarchists in the 1920s or Maoists in the 1960s. It's the difference between going after the most powerful person in the country and going after fringe radicals.
Entryism into the Democratic Party
making an independent socialist political party
We've tried both -- it's basically the DSA/Bernie approach vs. the PSL approach. I don't see any argument that the PSL approach has produced more results by any metric.
The George Floyd protests burned down polices stations, radicalized whole swathes of the youth and had millions talking about abolishing and defunding the police, entryism on the otherhand led to the death of the Bernie movement and manifesting a chilling effect on the rest of the left
Entryism without the creation of a national third party is meaningless idealism, and third partyism is by definition fringe
Have laws changed? Have police budgets been cut? Have murderous cops been brought to justice?
Burning down a police station is meaningless if it doesn't lead to something like the above. Radicalization that doesn't produce any results isn't much to write home about either.
And it's odd to blame Bernie's defeat on entryism when his campaign existed largely because he chose entryism instead of a third-party candidacy.
Burning down a police station is meaningless if it doesn’t lead to something like the above.
Burning down that police station wasn't meaningless to the people who did it and the people who lived under its thumb, and entryism that doesn't produce any results isn’t much to write home about either, radicalization on the otherhand provides the reservoir of energy and manpower required for any mass movement to develop, as we witnessed last summer
And it’s odd to blame Bernie’s defeat on entryism
Bernie's success was in spite of his entryism not because of it, he tapped into something that had been building for decades, and his embrace of entryism over trusting that reservoir of radicalism led to predictable results
when his campaign existed largely because he chose entryism instead of a third-party candidacy.
Then why are you defending an article that advocates for third party entryism, did you not read past the first paragraph?
Burning down that police station was meaningless to the locals, too. It's just a building. They didn't dismantle the police department, they didn't put any serious restrictions on the police department, the police can still kill them with immunity. Burning down the station failed to produce any lasting, material change because the people who make laws still suck. They need to be removed, and realistically that means primarying them.
Then why are you defending an article that advocates for third party entryism
The strategy this DSA article is advocating is running DSA-backed Democrats in Democratic primaries. Whatever you call that, it's a more promising approach than whatever else we've tried.
Burning down that police station was meaningless to the locals, too. It’s just a building. They didn’t dismantle the police department,
Destroying a police headquarters isn't meaningful? Disrupting police organizational capability isn't meaningful? Destruction of police equipment isn't meaningful? You're operating in vague abstractions, when a community burns a police precinct that’s a signal that possibilities outside electoralism exists and that everyday people are willing to take to the street in defiance of state power, THAT'S MEANINGFUL
Rainbow coalition entryist bullshit on the otherhand is not meaningful, and that author is a dumbass for trying to sell this shit all over again, as if it was something never attempted, "take over the Democratic party from inside" definitely a bold NEW strategy that's never been tried before, genius
We saw it collapse last year, and it will collapse again and again, because the Democratic Party doesn't operate around collective politics, its operate on careerist individualism that is disciplined by the donor system and media access politics, you can replace all the dems with socdem DSA members and you still don't get anywhere. Institutions have inertia and momentum and only outside force can shift it to the left
vague abstractions
a signal that possibilities outside electoralism exists
Vague abstractions are "signals" like this. Meaningful, material change is something like defunding the police.
We saw it collapse last year, and it will collapse again and again
Which wave of mass protests are you talking about here?
Signals generated by material actions like burning down police stations and flipping cars can't be abstract in the same way campaign promises by elected DSA politicians are
Which wave of mass protests are you talking about here?
Mass protests don't collapse because people didn't "vote enough", their beaten down, dismantled, and subverted, but each new iteration results in larger protests, faster mobilization, and an expanded pool of experienced agitators, which requires the state to invest MORE resources, MORE manpower, and MORE media propaganda to suppress
Electoral mass movements on the otherhand all fall apart on their own terms, according to their own inertia, they aren't beaten down or dismantled, they're captured by the state and then used as a bludgeon against Mass protest movements, this is why they're an inherently inferior form of political organization
Mass protests don’t collapse because people didn’t “vote enough”
But they do collapse. What they accomplish boils down to what they can pressure elected officials to do. And the response of elected officials is at least partly a function of whether those officials come with the priors of AOC or the priors of Nancy Pelosi.
Success doing what, getting Biden elected, recouping the Democratic Party? How's that working out?
It's impossible to deny Bernie's role in revitalizing the American left. And there's a growing number of DSA-backed candidates in office.
Running candidates under the PSL banner or something similar doesn't come close to comparing.
It’s impossible to deny Bernie’s role in revitalizing the American left
Just as it's impossible to deny Bernies role in completely cratering the American left, the data is in bud, his movement is dead
And there’s a growing number of DSA-backed candidates in office.
Local offices, local elections, none of which have remotely the same impact as burning down a LOCAL police station, lol you compare the effects of local protests to national and state level political dynamics and then turn back around and elevate local elections beyond their context as if they've somehow accomplished something on a national level, the same criticisms you apply to the protests apply a thousand-fold to your local fringe third partyism bud
Running candidates under the PSL banner or something similar doesn’t come close to comparing.
People said the same thing 4 years ago in relation to DSA and Bernies "movement", you've been radicalized, and you don't even know it
I think the main problem with the American left isn't any one person but it is one word, tailism. I feel that after Bernie tapped people on the ass so to say, people progressed to about the conciousness of a Bernie Sanders type, left wing populism, hating the "elite" but nothing further. One thing that this has created however is a small group of people who have moved even past this and into other more correct viewpoints (communism) but these movements have been disjointed from small sects like PSL and SAlt as well as other radicalized groups like breakaway BLM factions and some of the DSA factions. One thing that is needed is for all of these groups to form into a larger group and to have a unified political platform as well as unified structure. Some people have thought that we could do a sort of entryism into DSA but some people think that grow the parties like PSL. Like basically I agree that the communist and left movement in America needs to be bigger than what it is but I dont think that the main problem we have is an insufficently radical populace or anything and I don't think working with the PSL who've had infinite scandal over the past few months and weren't that big in the first place. What we need who knows execpt for a vanguard party.
Just as it’s impossible to deny Bernies role in completely cratering the American left, the data is in bud, his movement is dead
Everything about this is just so far from reality.
He had a heart attack, he could barely withstand the media blackout/blitz, last yearcompared to 2016 he was hemorrhaging support, he was sidelined, drowned out and ignored by the majority of Americans
His movement played no role in the protests and many of his top supporters have latched themselves to the democratic apparatus
And frankly Trump had a bigger role in radicalizing and mobilizing the left then bernie ever did, bernie has been there for 40 years, 2000 nobody heard of him, 2004 he was seen as a joke, 2008 nothing in the face of Obama's grift
Play great man history if you want, doesn't change the fact he's done
drowned out and ignored by the majority of Americans
What planet are you from? He had an unprecedented string of early primary victories and was the clear favorite until an unprecedented fix was called in. If the Tara Reade story or the pandemic hit a month earlier Bernie would have likely be in the White House now.
Arguing that we should run candidates in a party people take seriously has nothing to do with great man theory, either.
He had an unprecedented string of early primary victories and was the clear favorite until an unprecedented fix was called in
Literally the only unprecedented win was Nevada, everything else was expected or a crapshoot, he ate shit hard, he practically had no voter base in large parts of the country, he lost southern black voters to a segregationist and you want to tell me this guy was a harbinger of radical politics, please
If the Tara Reade story or the pandemic hit a month earlier Bernie would have likely be in the White House now.
bruh this is some grade A cope shit, if he was the man you claim he was, he would have stuck in there and fought for every state and every delegate, he would have used his base to generate a media blitz around covid and took the primary to the convention. But he didn't because even he knew his movement was cratered, all twitter barks and no grassroot bite
bernie definitely isn't a radical socialist anymore, but that entire primary was completely rigged.
no politician has ever won the first three primaries, either republican or democrat, except for bernie sanders. no time in history have the leading candidates all dropped out to endorse a single entity prior to super tuesday.
the exit polls all somehow differentiate from the expected outcome, and everyone favors joe biden, rather than being split.the fix was definitely in. which is just another reason that electoralism is a crapshoot.
You're just out of touch with reality. I don't know how else to put it.
Terminally online, constantly accusing others of being sheepdogs or sellouts, and rarely working with others to expand the socialist movement through mass action are some of their calling cards.
Good point, but the author needs to explain what they mean by mass action. If they mean just typical electoral organizing, political education, mutual aid etc, then it's valid to call such people sheepdogs.
Also, the only useful mass action is mass action by an independent working class movement, formed of and led by working class people (read NOT students, intellectuals, PMCs etc), who are pursuing things that further their own interests, not that of others.
working class people (read NOT students, intellectuals, PMCs etc)
I don't think it's accurate to exclude these groups from "working class people." Selling your labor in some PMC office drone job is fundamentally the same as selling your labor as an electrician. The office drone has more in common with the electrician than either of them have in common with their company's CEO.
More importantly, it's not practical. It would be a tremendous waste to exclude these groups because they don't wear a shirt with their name on it to work. We need fewer divisions among workers, not more.
Not to mention pretty fucking ignorant of any successful socialist revolution
I never said we should actively exclude anyone. Literally anyone, including multi-millionaires can be part of the movement. But it should be primarily composed of and led by the working class. Im singling out students, academics and PMCs because most socialist organizations are led by these types, and the well-known problems of infighting, constant deliberations, lack of useful action etc arises from that.
If we're not excluding anyone, why should leadership be reserved for "real" workers?
If someone's good for a leadership position, the fact that they sell their labor in an office is no reason to bar them.
You're mistaking a general suggestion for a rigid policy. The never-ending questions of "what is to be done", "how to organize", "what policies should be followed" etc etc ad nauseam that is present in petit bourg controlled orgs and which you are creating now too, dont really arise in working class led orgs that form spontaneously out of need. No one organized the Soviets but the workers themselves.
So take it easy and understand the main point: Communism is the movement of the working class, not the movement of students, intellectuals and radlib PMCs as it actually exists today.
Pretty sure people of all stripes have disagreements about how to run organizations, especially when there's not exactly a blueprint for achieving the organization's goals (and what those goals are might vary considerably from member to member).
You keep coming back to this idea that someone isn't a "real" worker unless they wear overalls and punch a clock at a factory or something. That doesn't make any sense.
Pretty sure people of all stripes have disagreements about how to run organizations,
Working class people spontaneously formed the Soviets and siezed political power in Russia. Meanwhile, you have decades old parties and socialist organizations today that are made up of members who still debate on how to organize, what to do, and end up not doing much at all. The difference is the class composition of these organizations. Organizations made up of working class people and led by them have clear goals of what to do, and how to achieve them. Organizations NOT made up of working class people dont really have any immediate goals, and their long term goals are themselves dependent on the working class.
So students and intellectuals can never be really useful to real commmunist movement. PMCs can be if they completely throw out their petit bourg ideological infection, but the reality is that PMCs tend to side with the ruling class more often than with their own class, kind of like a house n-word phenomenon. This can be fixed, but not by students, academics, lawyers or other petit bourgs "educating" them. The process of class struggle will eventually force people to choose one camp or the other, and this class struggle will be initiated and led by the most advanced sections of the working class (once again : NOT students, intellectuals, petit bourgs etc)
You keep coming back to this idea that someone isn’t a “real” worker unless they wear overalls and punch a clock at a factory or something. That doesn’t make any sense.
Never said this
I'd rather have a movement of 10 million libs who at least agree on shit like Medicare for All and raising the minimum wage than a movement of 10,000 True Leftists.
We've tried the whole "tiny but ideologically uncompromising" bit for decades now and it doesn't work.
Americans care far too little about foreign policy to build a mass movement centered on anti-imperialism. Try to imagine Bernie's campaign with Yemen substituted for Medicare for All -- it wouldn't work. You can talk to people who aren't already leftists about M4A; going after the sacred cow that is the military is far more difficult.
But if you get people on board with M4A, a higher minimum wage, and other policies to counter domestic exploitation? People who've already gone that far are a lot easier to talk to about foreign exploitation.
You could build a mass movement around opposition to a Vietnam-type war, but we're not fighting one of those now.
Lack of a draft and the sanitization of reporting are enormous factors by themselves. Another enormous factor is that even at the height of the Iraq War (and we're well past that now) we didn't have nearly as many American deaths as Vietnam.
I think many of these newly minted “ultra leftists” operate in good faith but have really OD’d on the zeal of the convert.
People discover that views to the left of Bernie/AOC/etc exist, immediately take those positions without reading much about them, then just constantly bag anyone they deem “not left enough” (including many people who they were to the right of not long ago). If you were a Warren Democrat or a libertarian or something three years ago and now you’re talking about how AOC is a deep cover Pelosi sellout, maybe it’s best to just kind of listen more or get more involved with politics offline.
I don’t want to reopen old wounds but I feel like a lot of the Force the Vote discourse came from this perspective. It’s easy to punch left without realizing you’re punching left.
This article makes no sense in light of the complete and total collapse of Bernie's movement, its crackpot realism masquerading as practical advice, all on behalf of generating an electoral party system that can never break the national two party membrane, this is 'When Prophecy Fails' but for socdem electoralists
Damn this article applies to so many :LIB: individuals patrolling this site lmaooo
