I’d say the essence of being a leftist is to spend so much time trying to prove that other people aren’t left enough that you never get anything thing else accomplished.
It’s so weird how when effective leftist leaders are regularly disappeared or flat out assassinated for several generations, the movement falters due to lack of effective leadership.
To provide a materialist explanation the way I understand it: From my perspective, that’s because there has been no proper communist movement in the sense of how Marx put it - a really existing historical movement as material fact in the political space - for many decades. (I, personally, do not think the Eastern Bloc fit this role after the 1920s, where it developed a state-capitalist turn due to their material conditions, e.g. having to industrialise, advancing from feudal-like structures, trading on the world market, etc. - cue the infighting over that interpretation.)
So “leftists” instead were just fighting against each other on a market of attention for resources - the dynamics thus becoming those of ideology, often religion-like, instead of material politics. Morality, purity tests, cult-like structures - all that shit was (is) common, because the material position of many groups was (is) - no matter how they would like to describe themselves - not really in opposition to capital all that much. It was in opposition to any other group for members, donations, attention and cultural hegemony within the “sphere of leftism” within the status quo, so to speak.
But at the core, I think that the mode of analysis has always been correct: One of class dynamics, one of property relations, one of production and distribution. So, the clever lots of the majority of leftist currents have been correctly Cassandra-ing for a long time now.
And right now, I think we are very much witnessing a proper, materialist crisis, the breakdown of the liberal status quo, social-democratic management of class war through the welfare state retreating - thus, I think necessarily, there will also emerge a proper communist, materialist movement again, which will hopefully direct the infighting over resources and members within the status quo, to proper political struggle again. (Not that the former will completely vanish, but I do think, it will slip into the background more). A material movement again, instead of an ideological one. One where it isn’t that much about what -ism you call yourself, or what flag you fly, or what newspaper you recommend to your friends - but one about how to get the political power so that you and your neighbours don’t get worked to death in labour camps and capital ceases to exist as a material force.
That’s fair criticism, and I guess that is something that happens in my psyche as well. But the thought process is basically:
The communist movement of the 20th century had been pushed back by a mix of Social Democracy succeeding in mitigating class conflict in the West, world market structures creating conditions for the exploitation of internationally cheap labour in service of upholding the global profit rate while still maintaining high living standards for the big Blocs, the conditions after WW2, where so much had been destroyed, creating opportunities for massive growth and basically 0 unemployment for a few decades - and the hope of the Soviet Union maybe actually being a viable solution directing class struggle into imperialist bloc-think instead of political struggle for the working class itself.
The Social Democratic welfare state is basically in retreat across the board, from what I gathered, even in its traditional places of strength, like Scandinavia, it develops more exclusionary mechanisms. One of the main reasons of this happening is related to point #2, that the global net profit rate has been in crisis since the late 70s, which prompted neoliberal politics (and ultimately also the crisis that furthered the collapse of the Soviet Union due to their dependence on the global resource market). At the same time, international, cheap labour has become less ubiquitous, mainly due to China developing a new, massive middle class, which removed a huge chunk of that cheap labour, and which is now also becoming a player in the kind of economic imperialism the west had been doing to uphold its own balance. (Note that China is now starting to face its own crises as well, as that period of growth begins to stagnate). The Soviet collapse also shook things up, removing what in hindsight turned out to be a false hope, but percisely the removal of a false hope opens up the room for a new one.
Thus, the underlying class conflict is erupting again, and from that, political organisation is necessarily as well. Say what you will, but there suddenly were phenomena like “socialism” being a genuine word even in US political discourse. There’s currently disorganised flailing around of politics without an underlying organisation and consciousness, as that old middle class is dying to serve the profit rate. The way I see it, we are in the chaotic times of growing problems and suffering (also exacerbated by the climate catastrophe), but those problems and suffering have always also created the contradictions and conditions for change. The very fact that fascism is organising is in my eyes a symptom of the upper class reacting to a new, burgeoning class struggle.
Now, I have no crystal ball to see what will happen, no one does. (And I’d like to stress: Pessimistic positions don’t, either. Just because there is a current in our ideology upholding the status quo to immediately dismiss anything remotely hopeful as impossible.) But it seems clear to me, that the material struggle between classes is very real, again. And the tools have all still been there, if anything, the internet actually increases international organisational capabilities.
I think across the world, you have the phenomenon of the younger generations being less interested politically in the old status quo, while material conditions continue to get worse and consolidation of capital does so as well. In recent elections here in Germany, the younger generation has been as split as never before, between leftist movements on the one hand, while their support for fascism was about the same as in the rest of society, and the old centrist parties had shrunk to a clear minority in their support, as one example.
No matter what it will be calling itself, I indeed think it is inevitable, that there will be a new movement of international struggle, that will fit the bill of “communist” - the really existing movement in opposition to capital and its tendency to create a growing class of people that own nothing beyond subsistence but their labour power to sell.
How strong it will be, how it will pan out in the end - that will be decided by us and our actions. But the political necessity of asking questions of property relations and class, that exists and will become more prevalent, I am sure of it.
We’ve never tried a pure and proper capitalistic movement either.
Genuinely confused what you even mean there - because, yes, we did. Like, to the extent “proper” makes sense - “pure” is nonsense that only makes sense for ideologies, not materialist movements. I assume there is some intentional snark to it? I may be missing some signalling there, AuDHD and all, but I think it is worthwhile to explore that idea, regardless:
What do you think the long and arduous, sometimes brutal, sometimes liberatory, stuff was, that happened in the early modern era? Where property relations and the mode of production changed from Feudalism to global (back then at first colonial) markets and industrial capitalist wage labour? That is also precisely, why I think a material analysis of the Eastern Bloc is so damning: They had wage labour, they traded on the international market, they even had hire- and fire at factory gates at times, with a more decentralised economy than more consolidated western economies at times (managers competing against each others for state resources) - even though their ideals said that that should not happen. Not for lack of their purity or ideological drive, simply because the material and historical conditions panned out like that for those entities.
That is what I am getting at: “Pure” does not make any sense, it’s ideological nonsense, IMO. And “proper” only means - being a material, real political force. If you go on general strike, the effects of that at first don’t care for ideology at all, they are immediate. (further organisational capabilities are still important, though)
I think that’s something we sort of lost in ideology, especially since the 80s - thinking not from the perspective of “ideal -> reality”, plopping an ideal on top of reality (and failing, and getting more brutal in failure) - but instead “reality <-> contradictions within reality”, where there are developments stemming from the way we produce, we distribute, power manifests and we, more broadly, interact with the world, and then resulting from that, failures and contradictions building up, leading to eventual, revolutionary change over several key, historical events. (That often fail repeatedly at first. See how republics and democracy faired in the 19th century after the French Revolution, where the common consensus for a long time was basically: “That can only result in new mass terror and a new Napoleon - or, if at all, maybe work for a low population, rural settler state like the US”)
As an aside: That does not mean, vision is completely unimportant, or anything, just that vision is itself is not useful as an ideal to strife for, but just a tool for changing along what is necessary and possible materially, and organising for that.
Lateral Violence occurs within marginalized groups where members strike out at each other as a result of being oppressed. The oppressed become the oppressors of themselves and each other. Common behaviours that prevent positive change from occurring include gossiping, bullying, finger-pointing, backstabbing and shunning.
I’d say the essence of being a leftist is to spend so much time trying to prove that other people aren’t left enough that you never get anything thing else accomplished.
I would say the essence of being a leftist is wishing you were dumb enough to not care. The idiots seem to have a great time.
I don’t think many leftists have to worry about that.
I actually just enjoy good faith conversation and debate, the progress is the point of progressives not putting out fires constantly.
It’s so weird how when effective leftist leaders are regularly disappeared or flat out assassinated for several generations, the movement falters due to lack of effective leadership.
Classic reactionary take, now we must fight to the death.
Here, hold my bong…
At least you’ll be doing something.
Spoken like a liberal
Palpatineironic.jpg
🧑🍳🤌💋
To provide a materialist explanation the way I understand it: From my perspective, that’s because there has been no proper communist movement in the sense of how Marx put it - a really existing historical movement as material fact in the political space - for many decades. (I, personally, do not think the Eastern Bloc fit this role after the 1920s, where it developed a state-capitalist turn due to their material conditions, e.g. having to industrialise, advancing from feudal-like structures, trading on the world market, etc. - cue the infighting over that interpretation.)
So “leftists” instead were just fighting against each other on a market of attention for resources - the dynamics thus becoming those of ideology, often religion-like, instead of material politics. Morality, purity tests, cult-like structures - all that shit was (is) common, because the material position of many groups was (is) - no matter how they would like to describe themselves - not really in opposition to capital all that much. It was in opposition to any other group for members, donations, attention and cultural hegemony within the “sphere of leftism” within the status quo, so to speak.
But at the core, I think that the mode of analysis has always been correct: One of class dynamics, one of property relations, one of production and distribution. So, the clever lots of the majority of leftist currents have been correctly Cassandra-ing for a long time now.
And right now, I think we are very much witnessing a proper, materialist crisis, the breakdown of the liberal status quo, social-democratic management of class war through the welfare state retreating - thus, I think necessarily, there will also emerge a proper communist, materialist movement again, which will hopefully direct the infighting over resources and members within the status quo, to proper political struggle again. (Not that the former will completely vanish, but I do think, it will slip into the background more). A material movement again, instead of an ideological one. One where it isn’t that much about what -ism you call yourself, or what flag you fly, or what newspaper you recommend to your friends - but one about how to get the political power so that you and your neighbours don’t get worked to death in labour camps and capital ceases to exist as a material force.
What in the world would make you think that? Sounds more like hope.
That’s fair criticism, and I guess that is something that happens in my psyche as well. But the thought process is basically:
The communist movement of the 20th century had been pushed back by a mix of Social Democracy succeeding in mitigating class conflict in the West, world market structures creating conditions for the exploitation of internationally cheap labour in service of upholding the global profit rate while still maintaining high living standards for the big Blocs, the conditions after WW2, where so much had been destroyed, creating opportunities for massive growth and basically 0 unemployment for a few decades - and the hope of the Soviet Union maybe actually being a viable solution directing class struggle into imperialist bloc-think instead of political struggle for the working class itself.
The Social Democratic welfare state is basically in retreat across the board, from what I gathered, even in its traditional places of strength, like Scandinavia, it develops more exclusionary mechanisms. One of the main reasons of this happening is related to point #2, that the global net profit rate has been in crisis since the late 70s, which prompted neoliberal politics (and ultimately also the crisis that furthered the collapse of the Soviet Union due to their dependence on the global resource market). At the same time, international, cheap labour has become less ubiquitous, mainly due to China developing a new, massive middle class, which removed a huge chunk of that cheap labour, and which is now also becoming a player in the kind of economic imperialism the west had been doing to uphold its own balance. (Note that China is now starting to face its own crises as well, as that period of growth begins to stagnate). The Soviet collapse also shook things up, removing what in hindsight turned out to be a false hope, but percisely the removal of a false hope opens up the room for a new one.
Thus, the underlying class conflict is erupting again, and from that, political organisation is necessarily as well. Say what you will, but there suddenly were phenomena like “socialism” being a genuine word even in US political discourse. There’s currently disorganised flailing around of politics without an underlying organisation and consciousness, as that old middle class is dying to serve the profit rate. The way I see it, we are in the chaotic times of growing problems and suffering (also exacerbated by the climate catastrophe), but those problems and suffering have always also created the contradictions and conditions for change. The very fact that fascism is organising is in my eyes a symptom of the upper class reacting to a new, burgeoning class struggle.
Now, I have no crystal ball to see what will happen, no one does. (And I’d like to stress: Pessimistic positions don’t, either. Just because there is a current in our ideology upholding the status quo to immediately dismiss anything remotely hopeful as impossible.) But it seems clear to me, that the material struggle between classes is very real, again. And the tools have all still been there, if anything, the internet actually increases international organisational capabilities.
I think across the world, you have the phenomenon of the younger generations being less interested politically in the old status quo, while material conditions continue to get worse and consolidation of capital does so as well. In recent elections here in Germany, the younger generation has been as split as never before, between leftist movements on the one hand, while their support for fascism was about the same as in the rest of society, and the old centrist parties had shrunk to a clear minority in their support, as one example.
No matter what it will be calling itself, I indeed think it is inevitable, that there will be a new movement of international struggle, that will fit the bill of “communist” - the really existing movement in opposition to capital and its tendency to create a growing class of people that own nothing beyond subsistence but their labour power to sell.
How strong it will be, how it will pan out in the end - that will be decided by us and our actions. But the political necessity of asking questions of property relations and class, that exists and will become more prevalent, I am sure of it.
We’ve never tried a pure and proper capitalistic movement either.
Genuinely confused what you even mean there - because, yes, we did. Like, to the extent “proper” makes sense - “pure” is nonsense that only makes sense for ideologies, not materialist movements. I assume there is some intentional snark to it? I may be missing some signalling there, AuDHD and all, but I think it is worthwhile to explore that idea, regardless:
What do you think the long and arduous, sometimes brutal, sometimes liberatory, stuff was, that happened in the early modern era? Where property relations and the mode of production changed from Feudalism to global (back then at first colonial) markets and industrial capitalist wage labour? That is also precisely, why I think a material analysis of the Eastern Bloc is so damning: They had wage labour, they traded on the international market, they even had hire- and fire at factory gates at times, with a more decentralised economy than more consolidated western economies at times (managers competing against each others for state resources) - even though their ideals said that that should not happen. Not for lack of their purity or ideological drive, simply because the material and historical conditions panned out like that for those entities.
That is what I am getting at: “Pure” does not make any sense, it’s ideological nonsense, IMO. And “proper” only means - being a material, real political force. If you go on general strike, the effects of that at first don’t care for ideology at all, they are immediate. (further organisational capabilities are still important, though)
I think that’s something we sort of lost in ideology, especially since the 80s - thinking not from the perspective of “ideal -> reality”, plopping an ideal on top of reality (and failing, and getting more brutal in failure) - but instead “reality <-> contradictions within reality”, where there are developments stemming from the way we produce, we distribute, power manifests and we, more broadly, interact with the world, and then resulting from that, failures and contradictions building up, leading to eventual, revolutionary change over several key, historical events. (That often fail repeatedly at first. See how republics and democracy faired in the 19th century after the French Revolution, where the common consensus for a long time was basically: “That can only result in new mass terror and a new Napoleon - or, if at all, maybe work for a low population, rural settler state like the US”)
As an aside: That does not mean, vision is completely unimportant, or anything, just that vision is itself is not useful as an ideal to strife for, but just a tool for changing along what is necessary and possible materially, and organising for that.
I’m talking about Ayn Rand’s vision as expressed through her character John Galt in her 1957 classic love story Atlas Shrugged.
Ah, okay, I was indeed missing all the snark, lol
I don’t appreciate my contributions to this conversation being summarily dismissed as ‘snark.’.
Typical leftist.
So all these replies I’ve been making to you have been in vain, oh SMCF?
I always enjoy your replies!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_violence