this post was submitted on 30 Dec 2023
68 points (98.6% liked)
GenZedong
4294 readers
131 users here now
This is a Dengist community in favor of Bashar al-Assad with no information that can lead to the arrest of Hillary Clinton, our fellow liberal and queen. This community is not ironic. We are Marxists-Leninists.
This community is for posts about Marxism and geopolitics (including shitposts to some extent). Serious posts can be posted here or in /c/GenZhou. Reactionary or ultra-leftist cringe posts belong in /c/shitreactionariessay or /c/shitultrassay respectively.
We have a Matrix homeserver and a Matrix space. See this thread for more information. If you believe the server may be down, check the status on status.elara.ws.
Rules:
- No bigotry, anti-communism, pro-imperialism or ultra-leftism (anti-AES)
- We support indigenous liberation as the primary contradiction in settler colonies like the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Israel
- If you post an archived link (excluding archive.org), include the URL of the original article as well
- Unless it's an obvious shitpost, include relevant sources
- For articles behind paywalls, try to include the text in the post
- Mark all posts containing NSFW images as NSFW (including things like Nazi imagery)
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Propaganda is no excuse to concede the essential Marxist tenets.
For one thing, 100 years is not a long time.
Secondly, without proving why a theory is now practically obsolete, appealing to the age of theory is a lazy dismissal. For example, many people's knee-jerk reaction to Marx is that he's irrelevant because he lived gasp 150 years ago. So much has changed! Before they had mean wage labor, and now we have nice wage labor!
Reformism was an issue throughout the 20th century. Both PRC and USSR took active measures to prevent reformists from undermining their respective parties. In Finland, the social democrats allied with the bourgeoisie to win the civil war (1918) and then allied with the Nazis to genocide Leningrad during the Continuation War.
I agree that the theory is not obsolete nor has the danger passed. I am not dismissing it because it was written 100 years ago. But I'm specifically commenting on your saying that we shouldn't align with those groups and that is true, but we should also recognise the material conditions as they are today and not in 1918: vehemently anti-communist, with social media as an important stepping stone (both fascist and socialist), and an interconnectrd world that seems more complex than ever before (I' not saying it is, the world has always been comex, but it seems that way because we get i formation from all over). So the theory should also adapt.
I agree that the theory should adapt. Just not in that way. Political climate and popular opinion, in a word ideology, are distinct from material conditions and relations of production.
The historical changes that require updating theory are things like Western financial imperialism that works concurrently to de-industrialize the West while increasing exploitation in the Global South; what Andy Higginbottom calls "super-exploitation". Michael Hudson and Radhika Desai have also discussed this in detail.
It has always been difficult and unpopular to advocate revolution, even in Marx's time. It is not uniquely difficult today even with the Red Scare. There was a time in the early 20th century that there was some modicum of support for revolution in some countries, but in every example it still required a bitter civil war.
I agree with your first two paragraphs. I disagree with the third. I do think it is more difficult, especially in European countries and definitely in the US, and definitely to go towards a socialist revolution (which is the one, I think, we fight for). I also think you are underestimating the effects of the red scare.
I do agree that Second thought should not start spouting reformist nonsense like voting will suddenly work or something, but I haven't heard that from him.
It's not how I would have scripted the video, but until/unless I make my own content, I'm not going to bash him too hard. Still consider him a great contributor. I'll leave it at that — thanks for the discussion