“burn it all down and let a socialist utopia rise from the ashes” perspective of the far-left.
Yeah, I haven’t really been able to make sense of all the tailism and accelerationism happening on .ml and hexbear. I don’t know how we’ve gotten to the point where stanning a bunch of right winged authoritarian countries is a form of anti-imperialism.
Unlike anarchists, MLs don’t really have a practical plan to get from the here and now to their socialist utopia. All they can do is wait for the collapse of the current society and hope that the subsequent radicalization will lead to them being the vanguard. However aside from the fact that vanguardism (and as an extension, ML) has been an abject failure, they can’t cause that collapse, so they do accelerationism instead.
The only rational approach to change this world is anarchist prefiguration which is the opposite of “burn it all down”.
Any idea where their current definition of imperialism is being grafted from?
I know they use a lot of language from world systems theory, designating America as the imperial core. However world system theory specifies that it’s only a way to analyze global trade, and that global trade is strictly defined by capitalism.
Any time I ask anyone on ml or hex, I just get downvoted and told that If I read lenin I would understand… But fucking lenin defined imperialism as a competition between Great powers, not a war between peripheral states against the “imperialist core”.
Is this all coming from some fucking streamer I don’t know about or something?
Lenin didn’t define Imperialism as “competition between great powers,” just that that was a side effect of the division of most of the world among the Great Powers. The actual definition of Imperialism by Lenin’s analysis is better simplified as export of Capital to the Global South to hyper-exploit for super-profits, like what Coke for example does in Columbia. The reason multinational corporations produce in the Global South is because they can weild their power to keep wages low and profits higher by selling back in the Imperial Core.
Lenin didn’t define Imperialism as “competition between great powers,” just that that was a side effect of the division of most of the world among the Great Powers.
I feel like that’s a semantic dispute, as a division of the world between capitalist great powers would be done competitively.
The actual definition of Imperialism by Lenin’s analysis is better simplified as export of Capital to the Global South to hyper-exploit for super-profits
I think you are injecting a little modern bias into the interpretation. Lenin didn’t really ever mention the “global South”, during his time the great powers were more focused on Asia and parts of Africa.
selling back in the Imperial Core.
Again, the term imperial core is a modern term utilized in global systems theory. Imagining that there is a single imperial hegemony is kinda antithetical to the idea of lenins writing about a division of the world between great powers.
My point is that the “war” was a side effect of the extraction process. Moreover, using modern terms like Global South and Imperial Core is shorthand to convey the meaning more effectively, otherwise I’d link Imperialism and be done with it, like how I used the Coke example. Additionally, “Global South” is shorthand for “exploited countries,” it usually coincides with geography but doesn’t necessarily.
Finally, it isn’t antithetical to Lenin to understand that certain Imperialist powers can be dominant in a given period of time. The world being divided and having one power with dominance is an example of two opposing ideas that can and do exist at the same time, and will be a source of conflict. Marxists call this a Primary Contradiction, that spawns Secondary Contradictions.
My point is that the “war” was a side effect of the extraction process. Moreover, using modern terms like Global South and Imperial Core is shorthand to convey the meaning more effectively
But people are utilizing the “short hand” of imperial core to validate conflicts like in Ukraine as anti-imperialism. Which seems to be a byproduct of an extraordinary process.
Finally, it isn’t antithetical to Lenin to understand that certain Imperialist powers can be dominant in a given period of time.
Even if there is a dominant power, capitalism demands there still be a competition for extraction to maintain growth among the great powers.
I just don’t really see how people are validating the support of the competing great powers, even if it is critical support. It just seems like tailism to me.
Right, I’m not defending imperialism though. It just seems that leftist shouldn’t be supporting the most reactionary views of the masses.
Supporting regimes like Russia is dismissing the social struggle of potential revolutionary voices at home and abroad.
"The tendency of tailism can be observed in the dismissive and confrontational attitudes some on the left take to matters of social importance—women’s struggles, LGBT+ issues, racism, etc.—that are adjacent to class struggle. We have surely all heard it said countless times that certain issues are “a distraction from class struggle,” or “not of any concern to the working class.” It surely does not need pointing out that the working class comprises people of all gender backgrounds, sexual orientations, races, and ethnicities, and these struggles are of direct and immediate concern to them and their lives. In fact these struggles are inextricably linked to class struggle and should always be regarded as such.
As communists, we assert that the primary contradiction that shapes and defines the world is that of class struggle: between the bourgeoisie and the working class. However, it does not follow from this that our work or our analysis must disregard all other contradictions and struggles as irrelevant. Quite the contrary: we must seek to unite struggles against all forms of exploitation in the revolutionary fight for communism. This is the very nature of class struggle.
In addition, Lenin critiques the narrow focus of economism, which he describes thus: “The Economists [limit] the tasks of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, etc., asserting that the political struggle [is] the business of the liberal bourgeoisie.”[2] He asserts that the fight for revolutionary gains must be waged on a political as well as an economic front. The task of communists is to unite the working class in a revolutionary movement, not to limit our focus to mere economic demands, which are in any case quantitative and not transformative."
Well the crazy thing is, I’m starting to think they don’t read anything but reductionist interpretations made by their fellow shit posters.
A lot of the language they use are terms made by liberal academics made to critique neoliberal policies in the Regan era. They just ignore the rest of the theory they don’t agree with, and then claim it all as Marxist Leninists, despite it being antithetical to actual ML writing.
How do you plan to scale that? Prefiguration sounds great for small already tight knit communities, however there are very few of those in the USA that aren’t complete chuds.
Do you have a plan for the drone swarms the people in power will send to wipe out your community? Living well isn’t a plan while you’re also surrounded by the enemy. Especially when the guy living next door isn’t gonna even listen to what you have to say because theyre so brainwashed by the powers that be.
Prefigurayion doesn’t mean “tight knit communities”. That tactic can be a refuge for some, but ultimately doesn’t work. Prefiguration means showing the people how mutual aid and solidarity can help everyone.
The US army won’t drone strike a community meal, or disaster relief events. And growing within communities, not as a separate bubble should be protection enough from bullets ever being shot.
You might want to look up what happened at Kent State, when American soldiers fired on unarmed student protestors. The media spread all sorts of lies about the victims, like that they were a bunch of outside agitators putting LSD in the water supply, and things like that. A week after the shooting, a poll was conducted in which 60% of Americans blamed the students, while only 10% blamed the National Guard. Of course, the media’s narrative didn’t hold up in the long term, and they issued “corrections” about their “mistakes,” once the moment had safely passed.
Othering is not something that’s reserved for foreigners, and there are plenty of people without consciences who the state is more than happy to recruit to do whatever dirty work needs to be done.
Do you think any of the people who voluntarily joined the military are going to give a shit about anyone other than who is giving them orders? The military is already committing atrocities in plain view all over the world I’m sure will be fine following orders to drone strike a wedding in the USA if theyre told its a terrorist.
Regardless, my point is they won’t need to because the drones that will be doing this will be moatly automated.
My main take on Tankies is that they’re sort of stealth right-wingers.
They believe that the way to communism is through a strongman dictator who will enforce the communism from the top.
If you sub out communism for “social hierarchies” then you have the right-wing wet dream. Because Tankies worship Lenin, the man who betrayed the revolution to seize power after he lost an election. It was the first and last free election in Russia, and Lenin ignored the results because he lost. Then he spent the rest of his life pretending that an authoritarian dictatorship could ever be communist.
No, true communism needs to come from the people. Extreme democracy is the way.
If you sub out communism for “social hierarchies” then you have the right-wing wet dream.
If you replace “the abolition of social hierarchies” with “the reinforcement of social hierarchies,” it makes left wing people sound just like right wing people 🤔
Turns out when 90±% of people when put into power have to grapple with their own morals and outside pressures they conform to what the situation calls for right then or use it for their own gain. You’re never going to get to utopia when there’s so much disfunction and division in the human experience
To me the tankies are almost like nazis in that regard that they want to force the issue and create a new world RIGHT NOW. When there are going to be a billion different factors that are going to counter act that notion and with prejudice
It stems from the dialectical part of dialectical materialism.
Yeah, but anyone can claim that they are acting within dialectical reasons. If you have some reading material that explains the actual dialectical process, I would love to give it a read.
So the thought is basically “let’s get the shitty part out of the way, so we can get to the good stuff.”
Yeah, but Lenin wrote specifically why this (tailism) is a mistake.
“Lenin describes tailism in What Is to Be Done? as the tendency of some activists to drag (like a tail) behind the most progressive elements of the working-class movement, by reflecting in their politics only the most reactionary views of the masses.[1] This is a mistake, because, firstly, it underestimates the political and revolutionary potential of the working class, and secondly, communists must be the revolutionary vanguard of the struggle, not lagging behind it as reactionaries within the movement.”
Haven’t read politzer, so I will have to give it a read. Thanks.
However, I was moreso asking how dialectical materialism is being applied in a way that validates supporting right winged nationalist governments like Russia or Syria.
It’s the entire concept of “critical support,” an enemy acting against a bigger enemy can be relied on with respect to their stance against said mutual enemy. Not everyone agrees with this approach, or that said enemy is not in fact the bigger enemy, hence the entire controversy. That’s the answer in as neutral terms as possible, you can ask Marxists directly in their comms for more info, this is a comm for Anarchism and I don’t wish to infringe on that.
It’s the entire concept of “critical support,” an enemy acting against a bigger enemy can be relied on with respect to their stance against said mutual enemy.
Does that not require a more indepth investigation into the motive of the country you are critically supporting, and isn’t that investigation reliant on perspective?
In one perspective you could critically support Russia for inciting destructive competition between the great powers. While criticizing their motive, and means.
On the other you could critically support Ukraine for defending themselves from colonial extraction from great power. While criticizing reactionary forces within their government.
you can ask Marxists directly in their comms for more info, this is a comm for Anarchism and I don’t wish to infringe on that.
Fair enough, just thought I should take the opportunity while I could. I have tried to breach this subject a couple different times in their comm, but tend to just get called a Nazi or other slurs.
Yeah, I haven’t really been able to make sense of all the tailism and accelerationism happening on .ml and hexbear. I don’t know how we’ve gotten to the point where stanning a bunch of right winged authoritarian countries is a form of anti-imperialism.
Unlike anarchists, MLs don’t really have a practical plan to get from the here and now to their socialist utopia. All they can do is wait for the collapse of the current society and hope that the subsequent radicalization will lead to them being the vanguard. However aside from the fact that vanguardism (and as an extension, ML) has been an abject failure, they can’t cause that collapse, so they do accelerationism instead.
The only rational approach to change this world is anarchist prefiguration which is the opposite of “burn it all down”.
Any idea where their current definition of imperialism is being grafted from?
I know they use a lot of language from world systems theory, designating America as the imperial core. However world system theory specifies that it’s only a way to analyze global trade, and that global trade is strictly defined by capitalism.
Any time I ask anyone on ml or hex, I just get downvoted and told that If I read lenin I would understand… But fucking lenin defined imperialism as a competition between Great powers, not a war between peripheral states against the “imperialist core”.
Is this all coming from some fucking streamer I don’t know about or something?
Lenin didn’t define Imperialism as “competition between great powers,” just that that was a side effect of the division of most of the world among the Great Powers. The actual definition of Imperialism by Lenin’s analysis is better simplified as export of Capital to the Global South to hyper-exploit for super-profits, like what Coke for example does in Columbia. The reason multinational corporations produce in the Global South is because they can weild their power to keep wages low and profits higher by selling back in the Imperial Core.
I feel like that’s a semantic dispute, as a division of the world between capitalist great powers would be done competitively.
I think you are injecting a little modern bias into the interpretation. Lenin didn’t really ever mention the “global South”, during his time the great powers were more focused on Asia and parts of Africa.
Again, the term imperial core is a modern term utilized in global systems theory. Imagining that there is a single imperial hegemony is kinda antithetical to the idea of lenins writing about a division of the world between great powers.
My point is that the “war” was a side effect of the extraction process. Moreover, using modern terms like Global South and Imperial Core is shorthand to convey the meaning more effectively, otherwise I’d link Imperialism and be done with it, like how I used the Coke example. Additionally, “Global South” is shorthand for “exploited countries,” it usually coincides with geography but doesn’t necessarily.
Finally, it isn’t antithetical to Lenin to understand that certain Imperialist powers can be dominant in a given period of time. The world being divided and having one power with dominance is an example of two opposing ideas that can and do exist at the same time, and will be a source of conflict. Marxists call this a Primary Contradiction, that spawns Secondary Contradictions.
But people are utilizing the “short hand” of imperial core to validate conflicts like in Ukraine as anti-imperialism. Which seems to be a byproduct of an extraordinary process.
Even if there is a dominant power, capitalism demands there still be a competition for extraction to maintain growth among the great powers.
I just don’t really see how people are validating the support of the competing great powers, even if it is critical support. It just seems like tailism to me.
Hence why Imperialism defeats itself.
Right, I’m not defending imperialism though. It just seems that leftist shouldn’t be supporting the most reactionary views of the masses.
Supporting regimes like Russia is dismissing the social struggle of potential revolutionary voices at home and abroad.
"The tendency of tailism can be observed in the dismissive and confrontational attitudes some on the left take to matters of social importance—women’s struggles, LGBT+ issues, racism, etc.—that are adjacent to class struggle. We have surely all heard it said countless times that certain issues are “a distraction from class struggle,” or “not of any concern to the working class.” It surely does not need pointing out that the working class comprises people of all gender backgrounds, sexual orientations, races, and ethnicities, and these struggles are of direct and immediate concern to them and their lives. In fact these struggles are inextricably linked to class struggle and should always be regarded as such.
As communists, we assert that the primary contradiction that shapes and defines the world is that of class struggle: between the bourgeoisie and the working class. However, it does not follow from this that our work or our analysis must disregard all other contradictions and struggles as irrelevant. Quite the contrary: we must seek to unite struggles against all forms of exploitation in the revolutionary fight for communism. This is the very nature of class struggle.
In addition, Lenin critiques the narrow focus of economism, which he describes thus: “The Economists [limit] the tasks of the working class to an economic struggle for higher wages and better working conditions, etc., asserting that the political struggle [is] the business of the liberal bourgeoisie.”[2] He asserts that the fight for revolutionary gains must be waged on a political as well as an economic front. The task of communists is to unite the working class in a revolutionary movement, not to limit our focus to mere economic demands, which are in any case quantitative and not transformative."
Ah, yeah, they don’t read theory written after the 1970s. I wouldn’t try to reconcile it with anything written afterwards.
Well the crazy thing is, I’m starting to think they don’t read anything but reductionist interpretations made by their fellow shit posters.
A lot of the language they use are terms made by liberal academics made to critique neoliberal policies in the Regan era. They just ignore the rest of the theory they don’t agree with, and then claim it all as Marxist Leninists, despite it being antithetical to actual ML writing.
What is your practical plan?
I literally just said it: Anarchist prefiguration
How do you plan to scale that? Prefiguration sounds great for small already tight knit communities, however there are very few of those in the USA that aren’t complete chuds.
Do you have a plan for the drone swarms the people in power will send to wipe out your community? Living well isn’t a plan while you’re also surrounded by the enemy. Especially when the guy living next door isn’t gonna even listen to what you have to say because theyre so brainwashed by the powers that be.
Prefigurayion doesn’t mean “tight knit communities”. That tactic can be a refuge for some, but ultimately doesn’t work. Prefiguration means showing the people how mutual aid and solidarity can help everyone.
The US army won’t drone strike a community meal, or disaster relief events. And growing within communities, not as a separate bubble should be protection enough from bullets ever being shot.
Why not? They do it in other counties.
Because the people conducting these drone strikes would be more closely connected to the community in the US.
These heinous acts were only possible by othering the “foreigners”.
You might want to look up what happened at Kent State, when American soldiers fired on unarmed student protestors. The media spread all sorts of lies about the victims, like that they were a bunch of outside agitators putting LSD in the water supply, and things like that. A week after the shooting, a poll was conducted in which 60% of Americans blamed the students, while only 10% blamed the National Guard. Of course, the media’s narrative didn’t hold up in the long term, and they issued “corrections” about their “mistakes,” once the moment had safely passed.
Othering is not something that’s reserved for foreigners, and there are plenty of people without consciences who the state is more than happy to recruit to do whatever dirty work needs to be done.
Do you really believe that?
Do you think any of the people who voluntarily joined the military are going to give a shit about anyone other than who is giving them orders? The military is already committing atrocities in plain view all over the world I’m sure will be fine following orders to drone strike a wedding in the USA if theyre told its a terrorist.
Regardless, my point is they won’t need to because the drones that will be doing this will be moatly automated.
We seem to be doing a fine job of “othering” each other right now.
It’s called “magic”
My main take on Tankies is that they’re sort of stealth right-wingers.
They believe that the way to communism is through a strongman dictator who will enforce the communism from the top.
If you sub out communism for “social hierarchies” then you have the right-wing wet dream. Because Tankies worship Lenin, the man who betrayed the revolution to seize power after he lost an election. It was the first and last free election in Russia, and Lenin ignored the results because he lost. Then he spent the rest of his life pretending that an authoritarian dictatorship could ever be communist.
No, true communism needs to come from the people. Extreme democracy is the way.
If you replace “the abolition of social hierarchies” with “the reinforcement of social hierarchies,” it makes left wing people sound just like right wing people 🤔
My point is that Tankies love dictators and hate democracy.
Which is the antithesis of communism.
Communism is much closer to a worker co-opt than anything else.
Dictators who seize the means of production are just kings in disguise. That’s Feudalism. It’s a step backwards.
Turns out when 90±% of people when put into power have to grapple with their own morals and outside pressures they conform to what the situation calls for right then or use it for their own gain. You’re never going to get to utopia when there’s so much disfunction and division in the human experience
To me the tankies are almost like nazis in that regard that they want to force the issue and create a new world RIGHT NOW. When there are going to be a billion different factors that are going to counter act that notion and with prejudice
deleted by creator
Yeah, but anyone can claim that they are acting within dialectical reasons. If you have some reading material that explains the actual dialectical process, I would love to give it a read.
Yeah, but Lenin wrote specifically why this (tailism) is a mistake.
“Lenin describes tailism in What Is to Be Done? as the tendency of some activists to drag (like a tail) behind the most progressive elements of the working-class movement, by reflecting in their politics only the most reactionary views of the masses.[1] This is a mistake, because, firstly, it underestimates the political and revolutionary potential of the working class, and secondly, communists must be the revolutionary vanguard of the struggle, not lagging behind it as reactionaries within the movement.”
Re: Dialectical Materialism:
Georges Politzer’s Elementary Principles of Philosophy is an excellent overview of DiaMat.
Haven’t read politzer, so I will have to give it a read. Thanks.
However, I was moreso asking how dialectical materialism is being applied in a way that validates supporting right winged nationalist governments like Russia or Syria.
It’s the entire concept of “critical support,” an enemy acting against a bigger enemy can be relied on with respect to their stance against said mutual enemy. Not everyone agrees with this approach, or that said enemy is not in fact the bigger enemy, hence the entire controversy. That’s the answer in as neutral terms as possible, you can ask Marxists directly in their comms for more info, this is a comm for Anarchism and I don’t wish to infringe on that.
Does that not require a more indepth investigation into the motive of the country you are critically supporting, and isn’t that investigation reliant on perspective?
In one perspective you could critically support Russia for inciting destructive competition between the great powers. While criticizing their motive, and means.
On the other you could critically support Ukraine for defending themselves from colonial extraction from great power. While criticizing reactionary forces within their government.
Fair enough, just thought I should take the opportunity while I could. I have tried to breach this subject a couple different times in their comm, but tend to just get called a Nazi or other slurs.
Thanks for the dialogue, I appreciate it.
No problem comrade! 🫡