I guess I find the current obsession with russo-ukrianian conflict strange and maybe even counter productive given the tasks that are at hand right now like rebuilding the lefts organizational capacity creating local connections and services things that are more fun then 
watching a war you know from across the ocean or like cheer leading for brics or whatever because its not like that effects really anything unless leaders of foreign or a senator goes on hexbear which would be equally funny and maddening. I guess I don’t just want to left to be a sub culture forever.
I work with two organizations in my area since they are the only to exist.
We got so much shit to do we need more people analyzing in real time and producing theory and praxis at the same time. You know walk and chew bubblegum, like I find it hard to find people besides like 3-4 American commentary that produce new Marxist anaylist on the current econmy.
First, the vast majority of the American left are social democrats who support US imperialism.
Second, of the remaining Marxist-Leninists who care, do remember that Marxism-Leninism is founded on the principles of internationalism.
There is no such thing as “socialism but only at the national level” in the imperial core. The wealth and prosperity of the imperial core are the direct consequences of the exploitative and oppressive structures imposed on the Global South, and the socialist project fundamentally involves the dismantling of such structures from within and without (hence Lenin’s revolutionary defeatism).
Third, the conditions for socialism in America are deeply tied to the demise of global neoliberal order.
As long as the US can exert its hegemony on the rest of the world through global financial institutions (and military industrial complexes), there can be no revitalizing of the worker’s movements, trade unions and revolutionary socialist projects. This is because for all these to happen, finance capitalism has to cede ground to industrial capitalism, where capitalists begin to (re-)invest in and rely on the domestic labor to grow sustain the economy, and not from getting “free lunch” across the Global South simply through printing currency out of thin air.
This is also why the rise of neoliberalism starting in the 1980s directly led to the deterioration of working class movements in America, as jobs were being exported to the Global South to exploit the cheap labor there and to crush the increasing demands of the trade unions at home.
The current economy in the US is so deeply financialized that the workers serve more the purpose of debt slaves (to service their debts to the banking and landlord class) rather than as wage laborers of productive goods and services of the 19th century and early 20th century industrial capitalism.
So yes, what happens in the outside world really does matter. And the American left who failed (again and again) to use theory to give them the foresight of what is to happen next, will continue to miss the opportunities for advancing socialism at home. If you really need proof, see what the American left has managed to achieve from the Covid pandemic - a pandemic that disrupted the global economic order and affected nearly everyone who lives under it. They got nothing - literally nothing out of a vast opportunity to push for socialism.
First, the vast majority of the American left are social democrats who support US imperialism.
I don’t think that’s accurate or fair.
The vast majority of the American left is anti-war and anti-imperialist. However, they’re just as vulnerable to the propaganda saturation of mass media as anyone.
Second, of the remaining Marxist-Leninists who care, do remember that Marxism-Leninism is founded on the principles of internationalism.
I think the crux of the issue is that you can’t act intentionally if you don’t have a base of support locally.
Third, the conditions for socialism in America are deeply tied to the demise of global neoliberal order.
The demise of Neoliberalism is predicated on a restoration of local self-reliance. The global financialization is predicted on regional drought. Deprive the Global South of industry and the Global North of agriculture. Separate the ownership of property from the ownership of debt and of physical capital. Then collect a vig every time money changes hands.
The only way to break that chain and liberate people is to re-establish local productive capital.
Otherwise, all you’re talking about doing is immiserating locals by severing the supply chains between them.
They are “internationalist” like “Free Hong Kong! Revolution of Our Time!” is “internationalist”.
The vast majority of the American left is anti-war and anti-imperialist
the vast majority of the american left can’t handle bananas going up in price by like 25%. imagine selling them on internationalism.
“no, your standard of living won’t really improve; in fact without all of our neocolonies and client states you’ll probably be worse off than before. dework? no way, actually it would be monstrous to sit back and enjoy your pile of imperialist loot, you will work at least as much as before and export your surplus to help your fellow workers whom you despoiled to become this comfortable in the first place. I’ll be taking all your toys too since our carbon budget was overdrawn like 75 years ago. so, how would you like to risk life and limb for the revolution, comrade?”
The vast majority of the American left is anti-war and anti-imperialist. However, they’re just as vulnerable to the propaganda saturation of mass media as anyone.
You’re contradicting yourself there, if the American left is vulnerable to the propaganda saturation of mass media then they aren’t anti-war or anti-imperialist, as we’ve all seen in the last year and a half, the American “left” is fully comfortable with war and western military expansion as long as it’s coached in acceptable terms by the media
jokes on you I don’t care about anything at all anymore
deleted by creator
Hard to organize anything IRL through the internet because of feds, hard to organize anything IRL through IRL means because we’re alienated as all hell. I think even as we do organize IRL any online discussions in a place like Hexbear will tend to be about international issues because… it’s an international board.
I also think it’s not without merit to be invested on these issues anyway. The biggest and most important technology capital developed to extend its lifespan is imperialism, to try to act independent of that is going to lead to some social imperialist, reactionary strands of leftism that die out quickly. But still, you raise a valid point that if we don’t produce criticisms of the current state of the economy we lose out on an important chunk of what we should be doing.
Nations are made up I just care about important stuff that happens.
american politics is dead, everybody knows that the market is in charge and all the government can do is punish the people you despise
the current failures of the united states are currently being endured by minorities (as usual) rn so most white americans don’t feel it and likely never will unless things get MUCH worse.
deleted by creator
what
Almost every successful revolution had external forces that push the revolution to victory. Every version of the Russian Revolution had it, the Chinese Revolution had it, the Haitian Revolution had it, Vietnamese national liberation struggle had it, and so on. Bolivar had no chance of liberating Latin America from the Spanish if it weren’t for the triumph of the Haitian Revolution. The DPRK would’ve been completely toasted if it weren’t for the PRC’s PVA crossing the Yalu River, and the CPC wouldn’t have been able to quickly establish the PRC if the Soviets hadn’t handed Manchuria to them instead of the KMT on a silver platter. There’s almost no revolution that was done exclusively by the revolutionaries themselves without outside allies and external forces.
And for various reasons, the deck is stacked very heavily against a potential US revolution, so relative to other revolutions, it’s going to heavily rely on outside allies and external forces relative to the revolutionaries themselves and internal forces. It doesn’t mean that we can do nothing until the PLA marches through Main Street, USA, but consider this. Many Eastern European countries during the 1930s and 1940s like Hungary and Romania were fascist shitholes, so how did they become socialist in the 1950s? There were legitimate Hungarian and Romanian socialists, but a lot of it boils down to the Red Army curbstomping the fascist regimes and propping up socialist governments on top of the fascist ashes.
Almost every successful revolution had external forces that push the revolution to victory. Every version of the Russian Revolution had it
what external forces were there in the Russian Revolution?
For the 1905 Revolution, it was the Russo-Japanese War. That revolution was a failure, but Russia basically had to crush the revolution at the cost of their war with Japan. The mutiny of the Potemkin happened less than two months after the Battle of Tsushima where the Russian navy lost all their battleships. In general, if you plot the major events of the 1905 Revolution like Bloody Sunday and major battles of the Russo-Japanese War like the Battle of Mukden, they basically completely clutter 1905. It’s not a coincidence that the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed less than two months before the October Manifesto.
For the February Revolution, it’s WWI in general. War meant the populace was forced to offer up their sons, brothers, and fathers to the meat grinder on top of domestic life just deteriorating in general. Widespread conscription also meant that you have a huge swath of angry people with arms.
For the October Revolution, it was due to the provisional government wanting to continue participating in WWI. There was also that infamous event in history where Lenin was able to sneak back into Russia from Switzerland courtesy of the German Kaiser and his agents. Obviously, he was no socialist. He mostly saw Lenin as someone who would greatly destabilize Russia, his imperialist rival. The October Revolution would’ve never happened if Lenin was still stuck in Switzerland, and the only reason why he was able to get back to Russia was because Russia’s imperialist rival thought it would be a good idea.
For all three cases, you had external forces that overwhelmed the old regime and opened windows of opportunity for revolutionaries to exploit.
I think it’s an online left thing. There’s a ton of unionization, picket lines, and local government activism going on in my area. People only mention international issues to try to figure out each other’s politics.
If your leftist activity is limited to posting on the internet though, then yeah, you have to talk about what the news tells everyone to talk about, because that’s what people are talking about.
So there can be no question of the will to do it: without the idea that they already have power on their side that makes an impression, leftists feel without credibility. Even if it’s not theirs and not the one they want. They saw the cause of socialism less at home in their own activities in their own capitalist society or in the sworn resistance of the masses, but in the global political conflict between the blocs.
- Gegenstandpunkt, 3/1992 “Questions that move the world - how can one still be a leftist today?” (from German)
International questions are certainly important, but the reason why they’re so much of a focus of the online, Anglo left is that the average leftist has a fatalism of sorts when it comes to domestic politics. Everyone around you is a liberal, communism is shunned and/or forgotten in the wider population, it’s seemingly impossible to convince people of the necessity of it because they’re all [violent fascists/labor aristocrats/settlers/etc.] so any kind of attempt I’d viewed as unlikely to succeed at best. We’ve taken L after L after L for the last 30, arguably 40 years so what is left to be done?
Looking outward. Since the work to be done here is so difficult and without perspective - one begins to look outward and sees countries where the cause is or seems to be further advanced than the country we’re from. Say Cuba, Venezuela, China, etc. - at the same time, we see that our countries are actively targeting them, so they must be defended. This way, a HUGE chunk of Communist organization activities turn into “Hands off [target of imperialism]”.
Mix in the “AES Cheering Squad” nature of such stuff, mix in infighting with that over whether countries are cringe or based
German Organisation example
There was a split in the German Communist Party DKP a few years ago (2018?) over China. The ones that didn’t saw it as Socialist left and founded the Kommunistische Organisation (KO). This org split once again this January over whether Putin and Xi were based or if the KKE had the right idea - there are now two KOs. The Pro-Russian one is doing stuff like inviting CPGB-ML people to their conferences while the other hardly does anything I heard about.
Mix in a pessimism of the possibility of socialism in the west and mix in actual hostility over our positions and you get a powerful cocktail of malaise in the western left.
From what I heard from boomer comrades, I believe the European left is worse off than in the 90s, because at least we had more people on our side.
