even if anti communist left is very useful to the empire and often collaborators with it, the truth is that they were/are/will be prosecuted too just like the tankies/”authoritarians”/communists/stalinists/leninists they hate so much.
i feel a bit bad for liberals too. theyre so caught up in anticommunism that they view nazis as participants in political freedom and democracy while only communists are the evil ones. however, they dont realize that they were also very much victimized by fascism and their enemies want to kill them, not engage in an election. this is why people defending Graham Platner are so stupid. why do you want to vote for someone not recognizing symbols that killed you too? liberals also saw death under the Totenkopf
You are correct in asking why these types consistently choose that path over and over again. It’s a very important question. If we accept that people are generally intelligent and competent, there has to be some wisdom to their actions. Why do they always abandon anything revolutionary? Why do they stop moving their followers left at a certain point? Why does it always end in throwing the rest of the world under the bus?
If Bernie went wrong by working with the system and being subsumed by it why did he not simply confront it, is he stupid? We are assuming he is intelligent and capable and I think he at least has the experience and understanding to match us internet communists so there has to be a more reasonable explanation.
When it comes to not making compromises with imperialists, you mention the KMT and CPC but you are an american citizen. Your conditions and relation to imperialism are fundamentally different than those in 1940s China. The purpose of learning Marxist thought is to understand the processes that move history and how they apply to your conditions. The KMT and CPC allied against Japan because they had common ground in their interests being opposed to the Japanese and compromising with them meant accepting their own subjugation. Can you as an american communist make a persuasive argument to your fellow citizens that imperialism is opposed to their interests? Does compromising with the imperialists actually require that you forfeit your own interests? If it does, this once again begs the question - Is Bernie just stupid, making an alliance that does not benefit him?
No. Him and the Berniebros who give up on revolution are intelligent. They have identified that under current conditions, their interests are best served by playing along with the empire and simply asking for more bits of what the empire extracts from the rest of the world. Moving these people left to a principled anti-imperialist position requires that you give them a better deal otherwise they will keep siding with imperialism. Can you do that? Is allying with the revolution against imperialism a reasonable alliance for them right now? If they are better served being loyal imperial subjects, then as you correctly point out it does not make sense for them to ally you.
If you cannot make a persuasive argument to libs and the compatible left that both upholds their interests and does not cede ground on the primary contradiction in the world then you have a decision to make. Do you put your own citizens above the rest of the world and start making concessions until your position is more palatable to them, eventually ending up next to Bernie? Or do you maintain your postion on the principal contradiction knowing that the only way we will ever get socialism worldwide is by destroying imperialism, even if it will logically limit you to a significantly smaller number supporters for the time being? It is, in fact a mutually exclusive trade off that you will eventually have to ideologically compromise on in order to align with a large mass of people in the imperial core. Thus, instead of moving them left, the cold logic of imperialism will move you into a compatible position.
Revolution it possible but it requires favorable conditions. There is little potential for a genuine anti-imperialist mass movement in the west right now and that’s neither your fault nor something you can reasonably fix yourself. The Bolsheviks did not create the conditions for the revolution either, the devastation of WW1 did and they were able to sieze the moment. Eventually your time will come too and so will mine even if right now it seems impossible. In the meantime, do not feel pressured to gain the favor of those who are better served by imperialism for the sake of growing your movement right now and at all costs because that’s how you become Bernie.
Side note: the original post mentioned empathy but we know Marxism does not actually concern itself with that. A sense of logic and understanding of the world is enough to reach the correct stance on imperialism. Empathy and morals can set you on an alternate track to reach the same conclusion, but they are not strictly necessary, only an addition that can give more personal meaning to the struggle and solidify your position.
However, I believe that empathy and morals are fundamentally incompatible with imperialism. To have empathy with another is to recognize your own humanity in them. Seeing your fellow man as fully human and equally worthy of dignity and expanding this to include the whole of humanity cannot be reconciled with the dehumanization and expolitation inherent in imperialism. To accept imperialism and become its willing subject you must reject the humanity of those it extracts from. The role of propaganda in the core is to provide a convenient fanfiction in which everyone else is worse and totalitarian and an orc or a woman hating terrorist therefore it is okay to suspend your empathy with them and enjoy the spoils in peace. People choose to subscribe to the fanfiction because it justifies the underlying interest they have in allying with imperialism.
Probably something like:
Good faith evaluation: He believes that he can do more with the power he does have than with no power at all, so he retreats if he has to, in order to cling to any semblance of power within the system at all.
Material interests: He personally benefits from the stability granted by working for the system. Both as personal prosperity and a buffer from being targeted by the state as an outsider who is a danger to the system.
Yes I’m aware. The point of the comparison, along with comparing to modern day China and Russia vs. siding with imperialists, it to make a point about the difference between justifiably working with someone who might normally be an enemy vs. working with the ones who are most interested in, and capable of, killing you (to put it bluntly).
I mean, I was a lib for a while. Some of it was self interest that I moved left, but some of it was a sincere interest in working out the most effective way to create a better world. There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, the voices I encountered along the way who helped change my views and so on. But I think it is maybe misguided to overly reduce it to formulas of who will or won’t be moved.
Class traitors, however uncommon, do exist. Dialectical materialism is a science of change, not a science of describing and then going to bed. Be careful of fatalistic evaluations that assume a certain outcome must happen because of the dynamics of what is likely to happen, especially when so many complex variables are in play. For example, in the US, there are plenty of people who are going to be (and probably already are) going down a rung in stability and comfort as the contradictions sharpen and conditions worsen. Things can (seem to) change fast, at times, because of how a cross over from quantitative to qualitative can be so dramatic.
So though I get the point about evaluating things strategically and not expending a ton of energy on people who are mired in wrong paths, I would also emphasize that investigating a person’s beliefs and conditions takes precedence over abstract evaluations of their likely circumstances.
I think this is a bit like saying “medicine does not concern itself with morals.” No offense meant. But though we may be able to technically say that marxism as a science is not a religion or a science of morality, marxism-leninism is something that, historically, is practiced toward deeply compassionate and humane goals. To divorce it from empathy takes away its storied history of dramatic increases in quality of life for hundreds of millions of people. It risks putting it in a position of academic purity, rather than compassion-driven praxis. Granted, you can be self-interested and still benefit from taking on a marxist view and goals. But this doesn’t change the character of its impact on human lives on a large scale.
I would agree and I’d say this is a very good reason that the empire puts so much effort into atrocity propaganda and/or both sides narratives. They are trying very hard to steer compassionate people away from the realization that they are supporting something unbelievably horrible and are trying very hard to steer those same people into believing that the best alternative (a communist vanguard) is “just as bad”, so that they will be trapped in cynicism, despair, or various wrong paths like adventurism and ultra-left shenanigans.
It’s more like: He correctly understands that working within the system and upholding imperialism at the expense of the Global South is a viable path for meeting the needs and interests of the American proletariat, overwhelmingly more so than opposing the system and building a revolutionary anti-imperialist movement. This is what I mean by material interests - the American proletariat as a class with Bernie as their representative, not Bernie’s own personal prosperity as an individual. The tendency of socialist politicians within the US to Bernify over and over again is the consequence of these basic realities of imperialism.
Weren’t we all? It’s not about reducing it to formulas of who will or won’t be moved but about understanding the logic behind the positions people take and how it informs political strategy. And generally I find that you do not move people, instead people move themselves out of their previously entrenched positions when those can no longer be reconciled with their needs, wants, self image, etc. and what you can do is spot these people and offer them something that covers what they were lacking previously. It’s less going wololo Lenin wololo at people until their shirt changes from blue to red like a priest in Age of Empires and more like identifying political strays who would benefit from your movement (the actual potential leftists) and addressing their pain points. I know people who back in 2022 were generic liberals ranting about Putler and how communism means no freedom and no toothbrush but after worsening economic conditions and the genocide in Palestine are willing to listen to me explain Marxist concepts and even actively ask questions themselves. But the first step away from the liberal civil religion was taken on their own.
Class traitors absolutely exist, otherwise we wouldn’t be on this website. However, as you note yourself we are uncommon and we need to understand why. Why do conditions within the imperial core produce such low numbers of principled anti-imperialists? When the masses overwhelmingly choose to break solidarity with the Global South, what is the wisdom behind their actions and what does that mean for Marxists inside the core? Can you change those conditions in order to produce more anti-imperialists? If you can’t change them, what can? Dialectical Materialism is indeed the science of change but understanding how change occurs is not equivalent to being able to enact any change you want at any time and any hour, and having a sober analysis of what is currently possible and what is not does not mean you are giving up and going to bed.
Consider again the Russian Revolution. Why did it happen in 1917 and not earlier? Why not in 1907? How did conditions change to enable it? We know the devastation of World War 1 created those favorable conditions. The Bolsheviks themselves did not start World War 1 - that was the result of imperialist competition between the great powers of Europe. And even more, the Bolsheviks would not have been able to start World War 1. But this does not mean they just sat in bed waiting for the Revolution to happen by itself either. They were out there studying and writing and agitating and arguing, and doing all of that without compromising for the sake of getting liberals or social-democrats on board when it seemed hopeless. Consider Lenin - he was famously sectarian, splitting groups and writing huge pamphlets denouncing all sorts of characters instead of considering them potential Bolsheviks. And even more, he was at a time convinced that he would never get to see the Revolution happen in his lifetime and kept dedicating his life to it nonetheless. When I say there is little revolutionary potential in the West right now, I do not mean it fatalistically, that’s it you can’t do shit, go to bed. You should keep fighting regardless, without compromising solidarity with the Global South, and if that means a longer and harder and lonelier road that you might not live to see the end of, accept it like Lenin was willing to.
Change is absolutely happening and as I have stated before the last 10-15 years have been absolutely amazing. Consider the example of a person who wishes for healthcare and education and is pondering joining the military for those benefits. Back in 2006, when US military power was uncontested, this was a no-brainer. Now the world is full of strong and determined adversaries who support each other and lob hypersonics when threatened and there’s a horrifying land war in Europe that makes it clear that war with those adversaries would be hellish and dangerous instead of a human safari against poor goat herders, all the while tensions are escalating. The empire demands more sacrifice for the same benefits. The calculus is slowly changing. The Global South pushes back and reclaims sovereignty over its resources. Less wealth is flowing in to the core. Contradictions sharpen as the brunt of the effects falls on the proletariat. There is a smaller pie to split and it’s getting harder and harder for people to claim their share or expand it. This is what creates actual potential leftists that you need to find and pour your energy into to educate and agitate.
I agree with you here. This thread started from empathy and morals and I simply meant to clarify that I don’t consider Marxism to be primarily an ethical philosophy. Of course we can derive ethical conclusions from it and personally, becoming a Marxist has made me a much better, more compassionate person.
Meant to respond to this, but had kinda put it aside, as it’s a lot of to go through if I were to break it down bit by bit. Overall, I get the impression we mostly agree, but maybe have some disagreement over the value of the differentiation between imperial core and global south radical potential.
On the one hand, I think it’d be a very fair criticism to point to the fact that the imperial core has never had a communist vanguard revolution (if we are considering imperial core regions to be predominantly “white” ones). And like I said in my reply to a different post of yours in another thread today, I think that racialized distinction matters, considering how powerful white supremacy is and how it developed in a way that props up the “civil/savage” colonial narrative. Certainly the labor aristocracy view is one way of helping to explain why the imperial core keeps failing to produce a prole revolution.
On the other hand, when was the last time any part of the world had a communist vanguard revolution? The Sahel might be the closest in recent history, though I’m unsure how close they are to socialist practice vs. anti-imperialist sovereignty. It’s very commendable what they’re doing either way, but anyway, the reason I’m putting the question this way, is to expand it beyond the imperial core to what is halting prole revolutions from having traction more generally. The number of states in the world we’d call “AES” are few, but so too are the number of states we’d call “imperial core” (as far as I’m aware, anyway). So what is keeping so much of the world trapped in this state of capitalist hegemony? The obvious answer is imperialism and the consequences of post-WWII US hegemony, along with the virulent and violent anti-communist campaigns that followed. We can further point to the fall of the USSR and the more defensive, internally-focused position that socialist China took in order to become the socialist fortress that it is today.
The end result is that a lot of communists were imprisoned or murdered, that great effort was made to poison the well against communism and socialism the world over, and that even “reformist” working class movements took a hit from all the imperial crackdown.
Now as you point out, things are these days moving in an overall positive direction relative to that. Anti-imperialism is growing stronger and China is showing up as the lynchpin of a new multipolar world order. But a lot of damage has been done by the post-WWII state of things, in both base and superstructure.
For an imperialized/colonized country, the struggle may be as “simple” (not to be confused with “easy”) as national sovereignty, which doesn’t have to be socialist in order for it to have value in opposing imperialism. In the current world order, this seems to be an easier sell than building a disciplined communist vanguard. Imperial core “white” peoples have a problem in that if they go for nationalism, they will tend to be reinforcing imperialism, rather than resisting it. Perhaps more so in settler states like the US, where nationalism is associated with being a colonizer and so it is not moving forward at all. This is an aspect to it that has little to do with “imperial spoils” directly and more to do with the psychology of rallying around a cause and being motivated to fight. What pride can you have in the possession of a land that isn’t yours? What way of life are you fighting for, if the only cultural way of life you ever knew was colonialism?
So the way I see it, in the context of settler states, it’s not only a matter of the dynamic of production and labor, but also a matter of white supremacy, and also a matter of trying to find something meaningful to fight for in the first place that is not reproducing the horrors of colonialism and imperialism. The most capable means of doing this is marxism-leninism coupled with anti-imperialism, but these can also be regions where the repression of communist (or even minor labor movements) is some of the most thoroughly repressive; not necessarily the most violent, but where the control is the most direct and immediate. Unlike an imperialized country, a Yankee cannot sidestep this vilification and repression of communism problem for the time being by being nationalistic. So it seems to me that what we end up with is a lot of anti but very little pro and this, among other reasons, makes it all the harder to rally people.
I think of what was once said about General Qasem Soleimani being murdered by the imperialists. I don’t remember the exact quote, but it went something like: “Who would we attack in retaliation that’s equivalent to him? Spongebob Squarepants?” The idea being that the west doesn’t really have revered figures like that to rally around. At least, not living ones.
Anyway, I’m spacing out a bit on tying this all together, but the general point is that there is, as far as I can tell, numerous factors that go into it and that the Global South is not immune to sharing some of the same problems, due to the reach and violence of imperialism in post-WWII.