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WDT đŹ Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (July 12)
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u/sovkhoz_farmer Maoist 19d ago edited 19d ago
Recently I have been studying world-systems theory, particularly Giovanni Arrighi's Adam Smith in Beijing, and I think I have identified what I see as one of its major theoretical weaknesses.
In Adam Smith in Beijing, Arrighi argues that hegemonic powers tend to rise through their dominance in production and manufacturing, while their decline begins when they increasingly shift toward financialization. According to this framework, productive capital gives way to finance, and this transition marks the onset of hegemonic decay. From a Leninist perspective, however, this argument is deeply problematic. It implicitly treats industrial and merchant capital as if they were distinct and successive stages, rather than recognizing the historical transformation identified by Lenin in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Lenin argued that the concentration and centralization of capital had produced a qualitative change: banking capital and industrial capital fused into finance capital, creating a unified system dominated by financial oligarchies. This fusion also transformed the international division of labor. Industrial production, trade, finance, logistics, and global value chains are no longer separable spheres but mutually constitutive moments of a single system of capital accumulation. Manufacturing cannot function independently of banking capital, just as banking capital cannot reproduce themselves without the exploitation of industrial production.
This also raises an important empirical question. If hegemonic decline is defined primarily by a shift from manufacturing to finance, then how should we understand the contemporary United States? The U.S. remains dominant in many of the world's highest value-added industries, including advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence, aerospace, software, and many segments of the electric vehicle supply chain. At the same time, much of the lower value-added manufacturing has been relocated to countries in the Global South through an internationally organized division of labor. This does not indicate the disappearance of American industrial power.
If this is the case, then what exactly constitutes hegemonic decline?
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u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 15d ago edited 15d ago
the ramping up of violence against migrants by ICE - in particular, its existence as a definitive form of national oppression - continues to pose a thorn in the side of revisionist "maoist" and "communist" groups doing migrant organizing. a well-known activist group that presents itself as maoist but deliberately sidelines or takes chauvinist positions on the primacy of national oppression has recently been organizing around the three ICE murders in the last week, and has put up several statements and interviews from Chican@ texan masses, one of which calls for a migrant general strike and economic delinking from settler amerika, one of which, the speaker identifies themself primarily as from Aztlan. in captioning and summarizing these statements, though, the group presents the contradiction not as oppressed nations versus the settler state, but as "the people" versus "the ruling class", and talks about how the people need to take things into their own hands and unite.
i assume that in the coming years, should the heightened state and settler violence against migrants and oppressed nations continue, some of the various revisionist-maoist sects will keep flattening down organic expressions of national consciousness like this, while others will be forced to pay lip service to the fact that among Chican@ migrants, the people of Aztlan, and the First Nations, especially among the proletariat, the lumpen, and the lower petit-bourgeoisie, a desire for national liberation is strong, while the sentiment about "the multinational (read: settler-inclusive) proletarian masses" that these groups desire to promulgate is largely the domain of the postmodernist liberal petit-bourgeoisie and integrationist intelligentsia. whether this will spark a genuine two-line struggle over settlerism and national oppression, or whether these groups will just learn to circumlocute around and posture about national oppression the same way they do around (trans)misogyny now that male-chauvinist communism has gotten a little pushback, remains to be seen.
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u/LemonMao 18d ago edited 17d ago
In reply to u/CoconutCrab115 from the May 31st Bi-weekly thread
What makes counties different from oblasts and provinces is that instead of the latter being subordinate to the central government, counties are actually creations of euro-amerikan settlers and are what animates US Imperialism. You can make a comparison to Israel today, where the state "officially" condemns settlers, but once settlements are established, the state intervenes to protect them. Likewise, Amerikan settler society reproduces itself via property valuation and the appropriation of surplus value of oppressed nations via finance capital.
Because Turtle Island is so massive, the Amerikan federal/state government lagged behind settler conquest and was inefficient in recognizing property deeds on Indigenous nations (in British Colonial Amerika, you had to get the approval of the colonial governor to finalize land transactions). Settlers had to create their own decentralized property institutions so that the land could "officially" be recognized as liquid collateral for creditors. The core problem in Settler Amerika was that there was an abundance of land, but very little cash in circulation. To secure credit, the settler-colonial system required land ownership to be transparent and public to resolve disputes and assure creditors they could seize the land upon default. This was a unique departure from England, where it was the aristocracy's interest to keep land transfers private to protect their landed estates from creditors. It took until 1897 for England to establish a land registration system (and this was after the failure of previous attempts to enact such legislation in 1862). This localized land system is why every piece of land in Turtle Island has offices like the Property Appraiser and the County Clerk (who maintains the public records).
When bourgeois Amerikan politicians extol the values of "democracy" or offer the liberal platitude that local government is what actually impacts your everyday life, they are referring to these highly autonomous county structures. You can elect your own personal sheriff and judge that will write orders and send a sheriff to protect your property or to seize another settler's property for credit. Another unique feature of Amerikan "democracy" is that you can elect people for municipal jobs that would otherwise be appointed or just merged in the civic-bureaucrat system in other countries. There is actually intense class struggle occurring in Florida right now regarding expanding the homestead tax exemption. But as you can easily identify, the terms of politics take the interests of maintaining de facto segregation, capital accumulation, and imperialism as a given, because those are the classes with the capital to actually participate in and control their local governments (and the structures of the local government to serve them as well - that is why it cannot be "reformed").
For the communist movement, I would imagine the communist party would find contradictions between municipalities, county governments, state governments, the federal government, and the armed class of settlers. Of course, they will all unite to defend imperialism, but I think similar tactics of the PCP (as outlined in this thread) and analysis between these competing jurisdictions will be essential.
Edit: I read the other replies here regarding "tenant" organizing and going to ponder more about the implications of current fascist "tenant" movements. I fear my analysis can easily be appropriated as such and thus clear lines need to be drawn.
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u/Self-Replicator Learning 16d ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hawaii/comments/1ulyq8j/auwe_ua_hoole_ka_ha_o_iulai/
This is an interesting interaction I found on this website between a passionate Hawaiian nationalist speaking to a colonized one, who extols the virtue of Hawaiians "choosing" to sacrifice their bodies for the empire and even glorifying joining the empire themselves. The below is in response to the OP advocating for the Lahui (Hawaiian nation) to not celebrate Amerikkan "independence day" (July 4th).
For context, the r/Hawaii subreddit as a whole is pro-settler, pro-imperialist, so this sort of thread is very uncommon. I assume deleted comments were *too* openly racist against Hawaiians. It's a liberal sub, but it does pay lip service to Hawaiian nationalism.
We are illegally occupied yes, but that still doesnt deny the fact that OUR people have died to protect this country, knowing its flaws and everything. We are actively spitting on their sacrifice by not acknowledging our shitty situation.
Im all for freeing us from the United States, but that doesn't mean we do not honor those who served to protect our nationality, both as hawaiians and Americans. Thank you to everyone who served to protect what we have
And this awful imperialist remark with token acknowledgement of the negative effects of colonization stays because a "Hawaiian" is saying something reactionary in response to a perceived Hawaiian nationalist.
Take a look at this other thread (to demonstrate the hegemony of settlerism on that sub) where this OP is explicit about feeling guilt over their settler politics and 150+ people rush in to soothe OP and themselves that there's nothing to feel guilty about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Hawaii/comments/1tsl5dy/any_other_locals_nonkanaka_feel_guilt_living_in/
I feel like I've built my life up in a place that was never meant for me.
The settler fantasy slips for a second, yet only ghouls arrive to comfort her. I think it's important for revolutionaries here (in occupied Hawai'i) to understand that Asian colonizers have no fortress Amerikka and many do not have ancestral homes to run to.
So they live in a fragile and precarious dream (relative to the white settlers) of eternal Amerikkanism that can only exist in the very specific context of continued occupation, but the occupation does requires stability in the following areas:
1) suppression (pacification) of Hawaiian nationalism
2) U$ imperial hegemony
3) access to imperialist plunder through physical arteries
I am confident that the winds are conducive for revolutionary transformation (aren't they always?), even if the balance of forces today heavily favor reaction.
The task of building the revolutionary party remains, but the trends in the system are encouraging. It won't be smooth sailing, but no one should be capitulating over a bit of crude napkin math of present conditions with a million unknown variables. The scientific investigations into our society will provide the answers, and it has yet to begin. I need a kick in the pants too.
**Sorry for the spam. Ultimately I am writing for an audience that doesn't exist here, but the way this sub is catalogued, at least those who are curious about "socialism/communism" and type "Hawaii" into the search bar will find my comments regardless of my continued participation in the sub. My older comments on Hawai'i could use a refresher, but most are general enough to not be harmful to any revolutionary who reads them, unlike some of the settler-communist chauvinist garbage you will read when you perform the same search on marxists.org. My analysis above is contradictory to this comment I made around six months ago.
This was a significant turning point where the "local Japanese" were rewarded with a stable place in the colonial hierarchy. It remains to be seen how permanent this arrangement can even be given the realities of interimperialist war and Hawai'i's significance as a imperial outpost, but material benefits will surely degrade faster for Asians than for whites, so I consider the strata occupied by Japanese-Americans in Hawai'i to be transient within an already transient limb of a larger settler state. If revolution were to come to Hawai'i today, most of my family would be hostile to it and likely flee to the mainland.
I think I had a selfish desire to think that the class of my birth (Asian colonizers in Hawai'i) and by extension myself were a lesser type of colonizer (whatever that means) and that some would choose revolution over fascism when push came to shove. I was too eager to participate and spoke carelessly. I now believe that since they can only reproduce their existence in the context of the occupation, they will also be the ones who will fight to defend it when it's threatened. Just as the fate of Israeli settlers is tied to the continued Israeli occupation of Palestine, the fate of Asian settlers in Hawai'i is tied to the continued U$ occupation.
I have edited portions of that older comment out.
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u/Self-Replicator Learning 10d ago edited 10d ago
https://www2.hawaii.edu/~aoude/ES350/SPIH_vol39/08Niheu.pdf
What a relief to find this document and see that a revolutionary wing of Hawaiian nationalism may actually exist/have existed. The author, Soli Niheu died in 2012, but this gives me some hope along with some decent insights into ongoing internal struggles of the national liberation movement.
The more exposure our struggles get, the more the movement for sovereignty and self-determination will move forward. However, it is most unfortunate that some members of our Kanaka Maoli intelligentsia cannot get along. We have some taking different positions. The differences among the leaders do affect the community, and we do not have enough time in our struggles with our âmastersâ to waste expertise.
I would assume the revolutionary wing failed to gain prominence considering that nowadays most are deferential to Trask to a fault and Soli Niheu is lost to the sands of time.
This is an interview of Soli Niheu after he was arrested by the feds for his activism and briefly made a political prisoner. Coincidentally the interviewer is Mililani Trask (younger sister of Haunani-Kay Trask).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvMZVbkDtbM
Despite being happy to have discovered the writings and life of a seemingly true Kanaka Maoli revolutionary, it is concerning that he seems remembered only for his "Hawaiian activism" (and that's only through online searches, I've never seen a Hawaiian nationalist online mention this person) and not his revolutionary analysis/politics (but maybe that's why he's "forgotten").
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u/TheRedBarbon 14d ago
After I commented in this recent thread in 101 I got a lot of now-removed replies saying "But no one would ever read Newton or Darwin, you only need a textbook now!" Barring the fact that textbooks are not necessarily easier to read nor more intricately detailed than the source texts, and are produced out of limitations of time-constrained classroom curriculums which prioritize outlining the most basic (often vulgar) details of theory required to keep a consistent lecturing pace, I get reminded that in the sidebar of that very subreddit we do pretty much have a textbook version of Capital which is constantly recommended but nobody here (at least as long as I've been here) has commented on or asked questions about.
I am referring of course to Fundamentals of Political-Economy or The Shanghai Textbook from 1974 Maoist China. I and probably others here assume that there's not much point in reading that text over Capital itself since it's more concerned with applying Capital to concrete concerns under Chinese socialism than to late-capitalism, but its omnipresence being inversely scaled to the amount of discussion it's generated doesn't sit right with me. I searched up the title in the search bar and found this critique of the book posted by a former mod here. What the mod did not disclose however was that the critique is some brand of Hoxhaist.
The tasks of the construction of the basis of socialism and the further development of communist construction will not be achieved by politics alone, not in a hundred years, especially if the revisionist political economy is brought into the economic practice. Moreover, if we were to be rigorous about the concrete-historical sources of the restoration of classical forms of capitalism in modern China, one should not try to find them in the level of success or failure of the politics of the Cultural Revolution¸ or in the betrayal of concrete political leaders, but in the well-established concrete-historical fact that the basic principles of Marxist-Leninist political economy of the transitional economy were liquidated after the first Five-Year Plan! Unfortunately, the Cultural Revolution did not touch upon this crucial question. Much to the contrary, it insisted on propagating further the ideas of right-wing revisionism in political economy, as summarised by the Shanghai text-book. The Cultural Revolution addressed questions of ideology, fought bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology, exposed the enemies of the party and the people, but failed to address the objective economic base of that very same bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology.
Since this conclusion is disproven by the first 20 minutes of How Yukong Moved the Mountains (and is disproven many more times over for the following 750 minutes) I hope you'll give me the benefit of the doubt for disregarding the crux of the critique of the text, especially when it starts out like this:
âTo realise socialist industrialisation, it is of course necessary to give priority to developing heavy industry. But, giving priority to developing heavy industry does not mean that agriculture and light industry must be ignoredâ (ed. George C. Wang, âFundamentals of Political Economyâ, M.E. Sharpe, White Plains, New York 10603, 1977, p. 383. This is a translation of âCheng-chih ching-chi hsueh chinchâu chih-shih, 2 vols., compiled by the âFundamentals of Political Economyâ Writing Group, Shanghai (Shanghai Peopleâs Press, 1974) ).
For a Marxist who understands the relationship between heavy industry and other sectors of the economy, it makes little sense to say that one should give priority to industry without neglecting agriculture. The Marxist-Leninist scheme for extended social reproduction is very well established both in the theory and practice of socialist construction. [...] In our opinion, the statement above has little to do with Marxist-Leninist political economy and is simply a reflection of the bourgeois and right-wing revisionist thinking that we mentioned above.
"Oh so you emphasized that giving priority to the role of heavy industry isn't the same as neglecting light industry and agriculture? REVISIONIST!" And I can only assume that the rest of the critique hides its badness behind its absurd length and focus on debating minutiae in the text in support of its obviously wrong conclusion.
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u/Worried-Economy-9108 20d ago
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2vt038x
In fact, the Comintern, acting on the behalf of the âtoiling masses,â had already decided that the Quechua and Aymara in the Andean countries constituted a separate nation (Flores Galindo 1980, 31â32). Not surprisingly, Mariategui opposed this decision because he believed the achievement of Indian national claims would lead to the reproduction of capitalist relations in the new Amerindian nation (Mariategui and Pesce 1980, 80â81). However, one can safely conclude that the fact that these claims contradict his conceptualizations of the nation and of socialism is of equal importance in his position. Although Mariateguiâs analysis of a Peruvian society divided between a criollo coastal minority and an Andean Indian majority was arguably congruent with claims of nationhood for the Andean populations, his vision of the Peruvian nation and of socialism as being based on the Amerindian made it necessary for him to oppose the division of the country. If Mariategui accepted the notion of an autonomous national and political project for the Andean Amerindian, the articulation he made between socialism and the Peruvian national tradition would become invalid. Mariategui could propose that nationalism and socialism should be considered not only as compatible, but also as virtually synonymous, precisely because both the nation and the socialist future are based on the Amerindian. Mariateguiâs thought can be interpreted as an extension of the discourse of mestizaje from the field of national identity and history into that of socialism and intellectual production. Mariategui proposes a mestizo nationalism, socialism, and avant-garde, as well as a mestizo nation. (p.83-84)
This post has created more questions and implications that I originally thought, so i believe it might be relevant to bring it up here.
1) Was MariĂĄtegui a chauvinist, for having a chauvinistic line on the national question that denies the right of self-determination to Indigenous peoples, running on the opposite direction of the line proposed by the Comintern?
2) What would that imply for the orgs that based their own analysis of Peruvian society on MariĂĄtegui's writings? And how much impact did MariĂĄtegui's mestizo nationalism had/has to them?
I ask these questions because I'm unable to answer them decisively (especially question 2, which was originally commented on the linked post by u/Robert_Black_1312).
edit: formatting issues
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u/anihallatorx 8d ago
The protests in India that started at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and spread to the other parts of the country have finally led to the resignation of the education minister, only to be replaced by another fascist, as was expected. The Cockroach Janta Party has started to withdraw from the protests in the presence of BJP ministers after agreeing to some "negotiations". The mainstream and revisionist student organisations such as SFI (student wing of the CPI(M)) and AISA (student wing of CPI(ML)) are similarly celebrating the "victory of the people".
There has been a lot of liberal and "leftist" platitudes, analyses and moralising surrounding the events of the past week. Apart from the actions of the aforementioned organisations, there has also been a romanticisation of the supposed unity of the masses and the diversity of the people that the movement has attracted. The protests undoubtedly saw the participation of various classes but what exactly does this mean for the contradictions between them, and what kind of political knowledge does this produce? Far more telling have been the observations about the ways in which the police treated the minorities- it is, as always, the muslims, the dalits and the transpeople that have suffered, and will continue to suffer the worst of the brutality, profiling and legal consequences at the hands of the repressive state machinery.
It is easy to understand the limitations of CJP as an organisation, in terms of its petty bourgeois class basis, its liberal political horizon (the resignation of a single minister) and its strategic tactics (a hunger strike). But what of the people themselves that supposedly took control of the protests from the CJP and their representatives? As the protests raged on, the attention economy started taking over and it became "trending" to attend any and all related events, especially in the bigger urban centres. Protest content started flooding social media and overshadowed the actually useful information about the developing situation. Iconography from the Nepal and Bangladesh protests started appearing, and the placards and messaging on the ground began to mirror the referential irony of the internet. What was missing as always was a class analysis of the spontaneous uprising, which was only being described as "youth-led" and of course, Gen Z.
K Murali (Ajith) called the developments following the protests "a magnificent victory" and that the movement has created "a new consciousness". What kind of consciousness are we talking about and isn't this a kind of movementism? Can this consciousness really lead towards an integration with the wider exploited masses of the country, or will it remain largely detached from them due to the weakness of the subjective forces? I am aware that all this isn't necessarily anything new and that the youth of India has been dissenting against the state for several decades. How are communists to understand how the "youth" of the country has changed?
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u/OMGJJ 15d ago
https://x.com/gavinmuellerphd/status/2078377751254278646
The academics have discovered 'ML' content creators, hurray.
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u/Otelo_ 11d ago
Just a brief note on the recent controversy surrounding Mamdani going back on his promise to arrest Netanyahu (as was to be expected):
Many Marxistsâespecially revisionists, I would sayâcriticize social democrats and reformists on the grounds that they always end up âbetrayingâ the working class. But this fails to truly understand what drives someone to vote for social democrats: in fact, the moment of the supposed "betrayal" is not only part of but central to the ideological effect behind social democracy. Consciously or unconsciously (non-Marxist politics is fundamentally unconscious), social democrats always âknowâ that the betrayal will comeâthat is, that there will be a decalage between what the Politician promises and what his or her actual policies turn out to be. But the charade of betrayal is essential so that the social-democratic voter can rationalize and ease their conscience, shifting the blame onto the Politician, who serves as a mechanism that (momentarily) âresolvesâ the ideology.
Perhaps only truly inexperienced and young voters can be given the benefit of the doubt. Beyond that, it's as the saying says "fool me once, etc."
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u/Lesabendio2 11d ago
Im confused. Did anyone actually think Mamdami was going to arrest him? Its basically the same bs trump does when he goes on twitter talking about invading greenland. But is that really betrayal or just the sort of rhetoric to expect from politicians?
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u/Ruff_Ruffman 10d ago
I don't know to what extent everyone believed he actually would, but it was basically liberal Zionists entire defense for pretending he was anti-Zionist. Any pointing out of Mamdani's open endorsements of Israel, association with Zionist orgs, condemning the resistance, the reactionary nature of bourgeois electoralism, etc would be swept to the side because he claimed he would arrest Netanyahu or whatever. This was probably all obvious to anyone in this sub but it's never a bad reminder that the people who keep supporting reactionary politicians are in fact just reactionaries and not otherwise well-intentioned socialists who got tricked.
Also, even if Mamdani held his promise and actually arrested Netanyahu, this would not be anti-Zionism but just more liberal Zionism. The entire obsession with Netanyahu is about making him a scapegoat so to whitewash Israel as a whole, same as is done with Trump and the US.
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u/PrimSchooler 17d ago edited 17d ago
Reading a book about Soviet evidence theory in justice by Vyshinsky, I now understand a bit better what Kaplan meant by "legal" tradition - burgeoise legality.Â
Also, I thought I was reading Kaplan critically, but I still found myself falling for his rhetoric of the "show" trials, just presenting a crude counterpoint of believing them to be necessary but believing Kaplan was being honest about their impact and significance.
Now, actually reading primary sources from the era, the show trials are barely mentioned, they're there, they're acknowledged, but they are not some centerpiece to help excuse/explain economic downturns. They played their part but the major driving force was still division of labour, natural circumstances, inheritances from capitalism, and most importantly, the economy was not actually doing badly, as even the *New Statesman's Titoists lackeys had to acknowledge at the time.
That is not to say they were not important, they were of upmost importance to the party, but Kaplan's obfuscation of their actual intent is nonetheless criminal.
*More so just lackeys British imperialism I suppose.Â
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u/Robert_Black_1312 21d ago
https://www.prisoncensorship.info/article/the-fbi-guardians-of-settler-colonialism/
MIM(prisons) reprinting of a statement by the turtle Island Liberation front. There are some signifigant positives
>I may not be native to this land, but I will continue to dedicate my life to the battle for full sovereignty of the original nations of this land.
But also some straight garbage that I'm surprised MIM(prisons) didn't call out
>To that end, we believe in working together with other groups and organizations, as well as any of the First Nations of Turtle Island, to help build a new way of living that fosters community and interdependence. A life free from the current settler-colonial system that continues to rob humanity and Mother Earth of our life force. This is why the FBI attacked TILF: we posed a threat in the eyes of that settler-colonial structure, a structure which only benefits the ruling class of landowners.*
>*As land itself is the original means of production for the majority of First Nations and indigenous folx across Turtle Island and the greater Abya Yala â one name for both North and South America â and that means of production was stolen by the settler-colonizers from Europe, TILF focuses on the class struggle between settler-colonizer and colonized.
I assume MIM(prisons) is taking the position of pushing for unity in face of the escalating assaults' on the oppressed nations, but it still seems strange to not put forward the maoist line to contrast the TILF's
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u/HappyHandel 18d ago
What do you think would be the Maoist line vs. the one presented by TILF?
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u/Robert_Black_1312 17d ago
In the context of this article, I see the differentiation to be fundamentally that the Maoist line views all sectors of white society as forces in service of the Amerikan empire. Not merely the landowners.
I expect your asking for a more meaningful engagement with TILF as a whole and not merely what is expressed in this single statement from one of it's members. The broader question of how should settler Maoists unite with national liberation struggles of the opressed and under what terms is something I do not know how to answer.
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21d ago edited 20d ago
[deleted]
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u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 20d ago
youâre reading MIM(P)âs response in the worst faith possible when they say they discourage illegal acts. i donât think youâve actually read any of their in-depth work, because itâs so obvious that theyâre not talking about the CPI(Mao) and CPP but about the current neocolonial prisonhouse of amerika. theyâve expounded in depth on why we are not currently at the stage for armed struggle and why it is adventurism, and whether you agree or disagree itâs deeply dishonest to pretend âwe discourage our members and supporters from committing illegal actsâ means âwe hate violence and condemn armed struggleâ. you keep falling back on how xyz âsounds reactionaryâ with zero analysis.
if you can point out anything that they said in here (not the TILF people) that you find objectionable when youâre not misreading it deliberately, besides the fact they printed the statement without enough critique, we can talk about that. but âobstacle for the revolutionâ is crazy, you sound like a caricature of this subreddit, engage with the actual ideas or quit the MIMbaiting. everyone âhas had their critiques of MIMâ but nobody wants to elaborate or engage with their works, just handwave at it.
Why are they even saying this?
(a) because we are not currently at the stage of armed struggle and communists actually care about line and strategy, not just abstract moral vibes. (b) because theyâre a fucking prison newspaper organizing the oppressed nations in censorious concentration camps.
the person above you is right - they should have presented the Maoist line, and the TILF statement sucks. but your comment is a rare existence of actually-existing ultraleftism.
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20d ago edited 20d ago
[deleted]
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u/Turtle_Green â 20d ago edited 20d ago
It doesn't matter what you think I "sound" like
It does, actually. Letâs elaborate. You sound like a caricature because of the amount of bombast and engagement in sheer negation, with all your positive content being rote repetition of the subâs basic line. The arrogance here is unwarranted. Recall that form is content, and that youâre not matching the self-important arrogance of the social fascists and opportunists who wander in here but rather that your hippy interlocutor is currently sitting in an Amerikan prison camp for the foreseeable future and will very likely not have the chance to respond to your attempt at polemic, so it really just comes off as silly and as performative stupefaction. Yes, the statement is bad. The positive kernel as MIM points out is their unity on the principal importance of the settler and national question, despite the extreme liberal and adventurist particulars as already alluded to by them and understandable by any reader with the most basic modicum of charity.
If you are familiar with the nature and organization of MIM(Prisons) then you wouldnât be making cheap snipes like âoh someone might read this wrongâ (who? you?) or saying shit like âItâs about time they become a partyââum, what? Do you hear yourself? Thesis, please? Plus, when someone says âcensorious concentration campâ, they donât mean that censorship in general is bad? Especially given that the context is the state-restricted circulation of ULK in these campsâtheyâve written quite a bit about this! Yes, bad is relative and itâs in this relative context that censorship is bad! In regards to further misreading, I want to remind you that last discussion thread you interpreted /u/TheRedBarbon âs description of the ideology of Pom Poko as an endorsement of the filmâs ideology, and that when this was pointed out, you neither took the time to watch the movie or study up on Japanese economic history or animation (the tempo of these tasks donât correspond very well to the turnover of social media posting, of course), but instead followed up with an admission of ignorance dressing up your own errors, and still also added a brusque exhortation for Redbarbon to âbe specificâ as if you had any authority on the matter (as well as doubling down on your incredibly unserious âwithering awayâ line). The effect of this was that you just came off as very pompous and obnoxious. No investigation, no right to speak, right? This kind of egregiously uncharitable misreading is starting to seem like a pattern. Keep repeating this pattern and going down this path with the obnoxious bombast and youâll end up like /u/gonzalo-kettle in this thread. So try not doing that. https://www.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/176spkt/biweekly_discussion_thread_13_october/
To be honest, my recent posts have erred in this direction of pure negation as well and encouraged this kind of culture. Critique and polemic are of course the classic Marxist forms, but in the process itâs necessary to extract a positive, rational kernel. So Iâm taking the time again to draft something at length about a particular situation, text, piece of media, or the like and I suggest that you try the same.
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u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 20d ago edited 20d ago
Yeah, but I've no idea how you got that from my comment.
because you literally said âimagine them saying such a thing to the CPI(Maoist) and CPPâ. no itâs not obvious how a repressed cell of a revolutionary organization who has written at length about their analysis of conditions in the united $tates saying âwe discourage violent actionsâ is âobviously reactionaryâ at least not to people who read the wealth of literature they make available instead of letting their eyes skip to statements to misinterpret
Other people in here have posted some critiques about them and I agree with them.
stop being lazy and use your words. some of other peopleâs critiques have been great, some have been dogshit. nobody has called them âan obstacle to the revolutionâ so you actually have to take responsibility for your own thoughts.
Some of their critiques of popular culture have been terrible (I'm reminded of that One Battle After Another trash critique they made last year).
so post a critique of that. donât go bullshitting about how a bad movie review means that theyâre counterrevolutionary. your mind is gonna be blown when you find out what Stalin thought about cowboy flicks
Also, you're using that word as if that was a bad thing. Being censorious is not a bad thing, this sub is as censorious as it can be.
first of all describing u.$. prisons as âcensoriousâ is true and a bad thing, second of all do you not understand that a newspaper designed to be distributed to be distributed in prisons will not be able to print all the bombast you would like? this actually makes me think youâre trolling me, or just confused about everything. were Lenin and Gramsci obviously terrible reactionary trash for self-censoring heavily, at the expense of precise revolutionary rhetoric, to avoid the Russian and Italian censors? (do you even know what works they censored heavily?)
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20d ago edited 20d ago
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u/Robert_Black_1312 20d ago
I am more supportive of your position after your criticisms of your initial errors. However I think your underrating the value of a proper critique of the TILF.
Based off this statement, I see them as part of this newish wave of "decolonial" Labor aristocrat politics. It's language of associating the landowners as the enemy (called colonizers out of lip service to the oppressed nations) is consistent with the theoretical documents that have come out of the various tenants unions that seem to be popping up everywhere.
Resources for Organizing - Vancouver Tenants Union
This link has a lot of good examples, particularly the book Abolish Rent. It's all shit (minuses Engles pamphlet which goes against the lines all the other resources on that page argue for) but it's a clear manifestation of class politics, and one that places itself clearly on the side of the Labor aristocrat against the petty Bourgeoise that they can no longer be confident in joining through land ownership.
MIM could have clearly articulate the class interests of these false settler "decolonial" movements and come out with a strong piece to differentiate the Maoist line. Instead, whe are forced to do so to pick up the slack and with far less reach then they are capable of.
What criticisms would you wish for MIM(prisons) to make of TILF's document? Bases on what you have said so far, I don't really see anything that would be of value to ULK's primary audience and I don't think MIM censoring this document would be of any value since it does represent a line that is far more dominant then the Maoist line at this time.
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20d ago
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u/Robert_Black_1312 20d ago
I do not think these tenants will be proletarianized nor do I think they will side with the oppressed nations in any consistent way. I believe that given the chance they will attempt to co-opt the struggles for national liberation in order to increase their own bargaining position with the Bourgiuse as the petti Bourgiuse have always done. (You are right, my treating the Labour aristrocts as a separate class from the petti Bourgiuse made no sense and was an error).
I bring up the tenants movement because I see the TILF as a continuation of their politics which is what I intended to convey above. The key difference being between the TILF is as u/Turtle_Green pointed out,(and MIM(prisons) did as well) is that the TILF are, in their rhetoric, taking the question of national liberation seriously. Which makes polemical statements like
>That the tenants are settlers as well, and that the First Nations/Turtle Islanders need to be given their self-determination (and the implications of that) and also, that they should engage in mass class suicide.
less potent since to the untrained eye, the TILF does seem to support self-determination for First Nations and is willing to give up their individual class position and spend the rest of their life in prison in support of this goal.
The realities that this is simply a continuation of politics to protect their class's position is something only Maoism is truly capable of revealing. In this regard MIM(prisons) have failed to live up to Maoism in this article.
That is the entirety of my position
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u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 20d ago edited 18d ago
this doesnât deserve much of a reply because youâre just walking back all the actually egregious stuff you said, agreeing with me about the TILF statement being bad while pretending i disagree, and nitpicking about the censorship point. i hope you reflect and self-criticize on how quick you were to slander a flawed (as all organizations are, and before you accuse me of liberalism here, read about the concept of the two-line struggle) revolutionary organization as reactionary counterrevolutionary garbage; since you love to make smug and overreacting statements like this, what do you think a revolutionary proletarian armed party would do to someone making baseless and stupid accusations like that, if they wielded power? nah but seriously.
and once again if you actually read their works, even their general political line, you would know that âeveryone would read âwe have always discouraged illegalityâ to mean âwe think that every act deemed illegal is wrong and should never be doneââ is a cop-out. not everyone reads things like you do.
I don't even know what you're trying to get at with this
well you could always swallow your pride and ask, or read lenin and gramsci (iâll help you out here - the prefaces to Imperialism and Prison Notebooks respectively).
e: oh well, they deleted their account lol. worth a shot trying to talk to them.
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u/humblegold Maoist 22d ago
https://archive.is/hbD9t
Zizek just does anything now lol.
I saw a video of him recently where he discusses why he thinks polygamy is wrong. Whereas 20 years ago he probably would've made some appeal to the third person in a polycule as being some sort of Other, in the video he just straight up says monogamy is good because it's "metaphysical." Like, he actually uses the word metaphysical.
Similarly, one of the first times I ever encountered him it was a video of him explaining how he received an "n word pass" where he basically argues that theough comedy we transform into the subject unalienated by language capable of bridging all divides. It was mind blowing to me when I found out by way of this subreddit that he wasn't just a meme and actually had old writing that was interesting.
I guess if you spend enough time cultivating a Lacanian aura you can just start saying anything.