From all the concern trolling I see in the other instances it’s clear that there’s no winning over these people. Everything is “Kremlin propaganda” to them. I do think a lot of chapos did go a little overboard with the PPB, but even thoughtful responses were met with the “hateful rhetoric” and “Kremlin talking points” BS. As always, it is to the Global South we must look to for any hope in the future…
I was extremely polite in that lemm.ee thread, admitted we could stand to tone it down a bit, even called out a rude post from one of our own, and I only got hostility from them in response. There’s literally nothing we can do to not be called wreckers
I agree that the most revolutionary potential lies in the global south. Hopefully, more gains can be made through partnerships with China, particularly as the US position geopolitically seems likely to weaken. Even now the US seems only able to accomplish relatively short term gains while setting themselves up for longterm defeats (the proxy war in Ukraine dwmonstrates this).
Its not surprising that revolutionary potential, and the possibility of real gains is higher on the periphery than within the imperial core. I think a lot of western leftists deal with brainworms (for understandable reasons) the the West is the main character of history, so the revolution must happen here and lead the world. There’s over a centuries worth of evidence to the contrary.
I say its understandable because its a less extreme version of the classic “left” liberal brainworm of “the US may be bad, but [target country] is worse.” Its also seen throughout left anti-communism’s stance and critiscims against AES. The unexamined assumption that the nations of the imperial core will be the leaders of the socialist revolution as opposed ro the last and most dangerous holdouts of a dying imperial order, is, i think, the last vestige of this way of thinking.
This isn’t, and I’m not endorsing, a doomerist position for communists in the imperial core. A better world is possible, and we should do what we can to defend our comrades at home from rising fascism and support our comrades abroad on the periphery. Not being the “main character” does mean there is no role to play. Revolution is like an Eisenstein film, the people, the class, are the main character and we are united across boarders
This isn’t, and I’m not endorsing, a doomerist position for communists in the imperial core. A better world is possible, and we should do what we can to defend our comrades at home from rising fascism and support our comrades abroad on the periphery.
With regards to this, I literally was talking to a woman the other day who readily admitted things like: how behind every successful man there are countless women who do unpaid emotional labor, how companies are taking in too much in profit for no reason, how companies will cynically shield themselves from criticism by appointing a POC ceo, etc. etc. She even said that workers should get a share in the profits of the company. I jokingly responded that her idea sounded kind of like socialism, and she immediately replied, “no it’s not socialism, I believe in capitalism, just not with so many excesses.” And this is a black woman who fully understands intersectionality, the problem of corporations, etc. So I’m a little doomer not just online, but IRL as well…
That’s a great question. Most people don’t even know what supporting capitalism means. Propaganda being what it is, capitslism just equals good in most people’s eyes in the west
I definitely understand, and have personally felt what you’re talking about. And if you’re just looking at the US/imperial core its pretty depressing. The most propagandized people who have ever lived. Everyone alive in the US right now has been exposed to the most advanced and coordinated and pervasive propaganda campaign since birth. The person you’re describing who gets so much, but is still “oh no not socialism” is maddening for us but also a sign of how greatly the contridictions of capitalism have intensified that her position and people like her exist.
The real hope for the future is in the periphery obviously, but remember our worldview is based on dialectics. The contradictions inheirent in capitalism intensify as things get worse, and that’s what ultimately breaks through propganda and brainworms. Ideas do not shape reality, material conditions do, and as people in the imperial cores material conditions change, their ideas will change. Part of why it looks so doomer is because for many people their material conditions are still too good to want to change their belief system, and because propaganda evolves to at least keep them from blaming capitalism itself or the US (crony capitalism, we need more of team blue in change, or the current “Bidenomics is working” bullshit).
Theres more hope in the periphery because material conditions typically are worse there, not because things are better. That’s an important thing for comrades struggling with doomerism to remember. Trust me i get the emotion, i think most of us do here, i think we’d be crazy not to. But having a marxist veiwpoint is understanding that a better world is possible. Not because of any idealistic notion of human goodness, but from an understanding that history, historical change, is a process governed by class conflict defined by the contridictions in the mode of production. The workers of the world will prevail, not because we are morally superior, not because we a better, or smarter, and not because the class as a whole will even necessarily understand the process they are involved in while it is happening. Material conditions and our relationship to them is what defines this conflict and causes historical change.
If anything, her acute awareness of contradictions despite her idealistic view of capitalism can be seen as hopeful? Material conditions are significantly worse than twenty years ago and that comfort in the status quo historically changes through class antagonisms. It takes so much to break through that barrier of capitalism being the only option because of that passive propaganda system you live through.
The unexamined assumption that the nations of the imperial core will be the leaders of the socialist revolution
To be completely fair, even Marx concluded similarly, and it took about 130 years of new theory and new evidence on top of it to get to where we are now.
I’ve read some about that, and also how Marx gave some serious thought to ecological issues and their interaction with capital/socialism. Still, Marx, thinking as hard as he did on stuff like this did think that, so we can give some grace to Metropolitan leftists for reaching a similar conclusion.
To be fair to Marx though, he lived through a time of revolutions where it looked like France and Germany were about to pop any day. Places in the imperial core during Marx’s time did have things like frequent uprisings, like the revolutionaries in Paris were what inspired the writing of the manifesto.
Marx had high hopes for the USA too, but that was a standard opinion at the time. Lots of German socialists came to the US to start little utopian experiments in places like Ohio.
the revolutionary potential of the global south has been repeatedly suppressed by western imperial forces. if anything, people living in the imperial core are on damage control duty. we can see the NATO fashonistas getting ready to throw a tantrum and they have a massive military complex to back it up with. i just hope young americans can stay fat, mentally ill, and on drugs enough to completely frustrate the military agenda tbh.
Annoying internet arguments aside, the people on the ground in the core also face the most expansive and advanced police state mankind has created yet. This makes doing anything close to truly subversive impossible without extreme precautions. Some Ferguson organizers dying (being murdered imo) comes to mind.
I searched Ferguson and got some stuff about BLM protests in reaction to the murder of an 18 year old. Was there something more recent or was this what you were referring to?
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/puzzling-number-men-tied-ferguson-protests-have-died-n984261
yes the shooting of Michael Brown from 10 years ago. Weird to type out, goddamn
Two young men were found dead inside torched cars
Ah yes, a very normal and non-suspicious death that happens normally
can you link me to any reporting on that? I haven’t read anything specifically but I believe it.
I’ll have to do some research but the killing of Daunte Wright was sus and I think there was another Fed style execution of a blm guy out west around the same period
plz explain. do you hold hope for america? I feel like the Ukraine thing is just because the way democrats just rallied behind another proxy war, and when you say that they go BOT!!
Also to expand on this, the vast majority of people in the US who consider themselves progressive, who are likely the ones that could otherwise be convinced to join in to a labor movement, are exactly the ones who have been persuaded to believe the #1 priority for good people™ is to support Ukraine. They have also been persuaded to believe that anyone who says otherwise is a threat to freedom and democracy™. In short, the war propaganda has reset a lot of the progress we made during the Trump years where people started to see how broken and irreconcilable was, by giving them false consciousness.
Those people don’t really believe in anything, when the US states department dumps Ukraine and moves on to other imperial projects they’ll shift their whole “belief system” right along with it
In a years time you’ll see these very same people begin concern trolling about the bad behavior of Ukrainian refugees, they’ll start using words like “ungrateful”, “authoritarian” and “mentally colonized by ruzzia”
But you’re right there is no hope in the north until climate change begins wrecking property values in significant numbers
The industrial and revolutionary fulcrum of the world lies in the global south
There’s a reason so many people believed the Iraq war lies. Propaganda works. Then and now.
It works, but how is baffling. Anyone paying a mild amount of attention knew we had been fucking over Iraq since the 1st gulf War. Basically the first Bush admin said if we topple this country it will be nightmare. and they stopped. (getting a ton of ppl they told to rebel killed in the process. we even loaned Iraq military hardware to mop up.)
The end of history is actually about how the lumpen have no memory of any political events that are no longer being blasted 24/7 on the news. History may as well not exist for 90% of Americans because history is in books.
Eh, this take is axiomatically unacceptable to me. Regardless of how absurd and hopeless it feels like achieving our aims in Western ‘democracies’ (and boy howdy does it feel absurd and hopeless), the abandonment of it is a tacit admission that billions of people are gonna need to die in rather catastrophic fashions before we get anywhere. Which, like I said, is a no go for me.
I always think of that Camus bit. One must imagine sysiphus happy. The prospect of revolution in the core is 100% absurd, but what the fuck else you gonna do? Give up?
