this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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I cannot believe PSL's cofounder is equating competition between colonial empires to USA trying to subjugate Russia and China.
Or that he's trying to push this narrative that the post WWII world was not multipolar. The only reason a US middle class was ever even allowed to exist.
Go to the 1 hour and 24 minute mark of the interview, that's NOT what he's saying. View my other comment.
Tbh this is on me. I should have known that a Rage Against the War Machine guy will never have a normal and good faith take.
I don't keep up with American left political developments so it never occurred to me that people use multipolarity was a springboard for Putin worshipping.
The putin worshipping stuff is less of a development on the left imo, but something you see growing in the rightwing camp. There's a PSL article about the similarities between the "America First" chauvinism prior to WW1 and the similarities between the same right wing opposition to NATO currently.
Shea sometimes reads like a straight up CNN article the way he editorializes 😂
I mean, he is still kind of saying that, no? He answers the question "is it good that unipolarity has been challenged?" and his answer is in essence no because it just seems like he argues against some multipolarity in general without considering the material reality of today's world split into the west and the rest (with China on top). His answer implies that today's multipolarity is like that of pre-WW1 which is in contradiction with his stance in general.
The question itself is problematic. What does it mean for it to be good? In a vacuum, no, multipolarity is not inherently good for the working class, and the evidence is forms of multipolarity that were bad for the working class. For multipolarity to be good, it must be inclusive of an anti-imperialist pole at minimum and an explicitly socialist pole must develop as well. Becker doesn't say China isn't that, but we all know that Russia isn't socialist so it's not enough for Russia to challenge the US. He's correct on this. The situation is terribly fraught right now. We are all waiting to see what BRICS announces in late August and we are all watching China without making predictions or value judgments hoping that we end up in the multipolar chess board we need. Until then, focus at home where you have power.
Listen to Becker's podcast and it becomes abundantly obvious that Shea is full of shit and acting in bad faith.
I agree that the question is problematic, but he doesn't challenge it. He answers as if the assumption of an abstract multipolarity is valid. I think he should've answered concretely, in accordance with today's material reality.
Again, I don't care about Shea, I'm not defending him, and I don't care what he's saying. I'm commenting on the interview in question.
I mean, at this point, you're just saying he didn't answer it the way you would have answered it and that you think there's a correct answer and that he failed you personally. Going through life like that isn't going to lead to good outcomes. Trotsky was like that, too. Becker's answer to the question was not revisionist, it was not imperial apologia, it was not incorrect. The logical inference we can draw from Becker's response is that more must be done to secure the revolution, even if Russia and China are bringing about multipolarity, and this inference is correct. So you may disagree with the answer, but it leads to the correct outcome. There must be a socialist revolution in Russia at some point if the global working class is to be liberated. Just having a multipolar world replete with non-socialist powers is insufficient to the task. As socialists in all countries hear this answer, the only inference to be made is that we each have work to do building socialist revolutions domestically so that when the multipolar world emerges and as it develops, it is the workers that drive what comes next.
I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm analyzing his answer in the context of the interview and the geopolitical situation today.
It was arguably off topic and not really an answer to the specific question. The whole interview is about the particular situation today, not an abstract multipolarity. Socialism is present today, especially with China which is leading the bloc of countries struggling against US hegemony.
The question was whether loss of US hegemony today is good, and his answer does not lead to this conclusion. What you've said in the rest of your comment is correct, but it cannot be inferred just from Becker's answer as it stops short of giving an actual judgement on the loss of hegemony in question. He talks about multipolarity in abstract and not the particular multipolary we're getting where socialist China is one of the poles.
If his takes otherwise are good, then great. Same goes for the PSL. I'm just critiquing his answer here which seems contradictory to the rest of the interview.
as many others have said in this thread, you aren't getting what he is saying. multipolarity alone is not the answer.
Based on the contradictory positions Becker takes on Russia compared to China, he's probably just trying to appeal to liberals to grow the PSL. Saying 'Russia not good' is kinda necessary to prevent liberals from losing their minds right now. Does this stance temporarily screw up their real MLtheory? Yes. Does this stance attract more new members? Maybe.
Don't take Rainer Shea's words as fact. Nearly every position he ascribes to Becker and the PSL are incorrect. He's writing in bad faith.
This is exactly the problem. It is possible that this erroneous position was taken out of opportunism, a misguided impulse to try to appeal to liberals by capitulating to the imperialist narrative on Russia. I had a lot of respect for B.B. and the PSL before this, but sadly this has undermined a lot of that. I just don't think you can build a principled socialist movement this way. You are much better off trying to appeal to the apolitical and even the more backwards sections of the working class than to the middle class liberals who have fully bought into the demonization of Russia. More and more i am convinced that no progress will ever be made by any "radical" group in the US until and unless they have completely severed themselves from the Democratic Party.
That's what Rainer Shea is trying to do. If you want to lose respect for the PSL and for Becker, at least go listen to several hours of their content and read the sources instead of trusting Shea.
Have they in any of those hours of content ever expressed support for what Russia is doing in Ukraine or even Russia's actions in Syria? Because if not, i'm not interested. At this point i have personally drawn a line in my life and i have no more time for westerners who call themselves communists or socialists but refuse to support or even defend the boldest and most serious military challenge to the US' global imperialist hegmony in 50 years. Not to mention that Russia is literally fighting against a genocidal fascist regime. The least any principled leftist can do is critically support them in that. To me this goes hand in hand with supporting the economic challenge that China's BRI represents to the global neocolonial yoke. They can praise the USSR and talk Marxist theory all day but the bottom line is: anyone who refuses to support either of these two main pillars of modern anti-imperialism is simply not worth taking seriously as a revolutionary. Because there is no way in hell you will ever get to socialism without first defeating imperialism, and the only ones currently striking any serious blows at it are Russia and China - and as much as i love the PRC at the moment the Russians are actually doing more, they are physically fighting and dying in battle against fascism and imperialism. Meanwhile the likes of Becker and the PSL can sit comfortably in the imperial core criticizing Russia for its contradictions while they themselves opportunistically work with the imperialist murderers of the Democratic Party. And don't try to deny it, both the PSL and the CPUSA have ties to the Democrat political machine and both have at times advocated for voting Democrat.
Yes, critical support. War is bad. War is hell. But Russia didn't start the war. They go into the history of NATO, they speak to Russia's legitimate security concerns. Becker explicitly says something like "I may not personally agree with the choice to go to war but it's not my choice, it's Russia's choice to defend it's national sovereignty against NATO which is an existential nuclear threat".
Becker isn't a cheerleader for anyone attacking the US. That's not his role. But he absolutely states the US should lose the proxy war, that the US is the most powerful anti-worker and anti-communist force in the world, and that it should not be defended. He also states, correctly that the US losing is insufficient for the socialist cause and if the US loses it could just result in an openly fascistic and crazed nuclear conflagration so we need to build socialism here and stop the US from destroying us all. It's not enough for Russia to win this battle if the US just escalates to global conflagration, it's got to be MORE than just Russia winning.
We all are, it's called the North Atlantic. The Ukrainian state is genocidal and fascistic only through the influence and material support and cultivation of and by the North Atlantic.
They do. Stop listening to Shea. He's deliberately misrepresenting this and we haven't figured out why yet.
Becker and the PSL are not sitting around talking about glorious histories. They are engaged in trying to figure out how to get more people on the socialist track and hopefully with least amount of conflagration possible, knowing full well that war will happen. They don't shit on China, nor the BRI. To the contrary, they defend it against attack. What they don't do is glorify it and cheerlead for it. Again, not their role.
And Becker and the PSL know that. And they also know that they can only defeat imperialism domestically, so they waste as little time as possible in trying to get Americans to support China, because it literally does nothing material. They spend half their time tearing down liberal arguments and the other half trying to paint a picture of what socialism might look like in the hopes of inspiring people to actually support a socialist party in America and take down the imperialists from the inside.
Which is why the PSL and Becker defend them against liberal arguments but also try to build a movement domestically so that it isn't solely on the shoulders of Russia and China.
We can agree to disagree here. The Russians didn't invade Ukraine to undermine US hegemony. They invaded to protect their national security interests against a deadly encirclement. China, on the other hand, is proactively undermining US hegemony on multiple fronts simultaneously (diplomacy, industrialization, finance, currency, education, rhetoric, etc)
I have no love for the CPUSA. The PSL is currently the best option for a socialist party that I've seen. They're not PatSocs, their not a voter mobilization association, they aren't revisionists. Simultaneously, they're not millenial/gen Z integrated - no memes, no loud calls for death to America, no cheerleading US opponents. They are sober, measured, and thoughtful.
Honestly though, I just remembered this is all so fucking silly. Becker's show used to be on RT America before it got shutdown and he had to go to independent podcasting. Like, if you're upset enough to not listen to some imperial core leftists, then stop listening to Rainer Shea. This article he wrote is literally trying to generate the response you've just had, and it's crystal clear to me and anyone else who's been listening to Becker and the PSL that Shea is full of shit and deliberately sowing discord.
Ok, this was a good response. I'll take your word for it and give Becker and PSL the benefit of the doubt on this one, because i had previously only heard good things from them in the past. I still think Shea gets an unfairly bad rap on this site and for the life of me i can't understand why.
We're telling you why. It's because he's lying through his fucking teeth in a way that requires him to deeply understand what he's doing.
I'm not sure how you conclude that he is lying. He may simply be overly critical and have picked up on something that was not meant that way. He's not even saying that you shouldn't support PSL, he is just critical of this one thing they said. I'm sure he has a bias, it's clear he thinks PCUSA is a more preferable organization that has a better position on the Russia issue. But i don't see where he is deliberately lying. You're being just as uncharitable toward him as he is toward Becker. For my part i remain unconvinced that either of them are acting in bad faith, i think they are both hostage to their own biases, as we all are.
Rainer literally interprets Becker's critical support across MULTIPLE sources of Becker's words as anti-Russian sentiment. If anyone listens to Becker's words across multiple sources, it's clear that he's not anti-Russian despite critiquing Russia as not socialist, which is accurate. But then Rainer goes on to find Becker's words of support for anti-imperialism, which are no doubt inclusive of Becker's words establishing pretty clearly that Russia is not an imperialist power, and instead of revising his understanding he literally accuses Becker of being inconsistent in his position and being self-contradictory.
Now, if it were you, a normal every day person who hasn't been doing political analysis in the public sphere for 5 years like Rainer has, and you found some milquetoast critique of Russia as not socialist, some demuring that multipolarity is not enough on its own, and some anti-war sentiment, you could be excused for thinking that the speaker was maybe not to your political liking. But then, if you find more words by that person that absolutely support your political position, you might think "hmm, maybe I was wrong about this person" and maybe you'd listen to them more and learn more about their position.
Rainer, on the other hand, has been writing hit pieces against Becker and the PSL for months now, if not longer. He clearly has listened to more of their content than you have, and when he specifically selects, in some cases omits words from his selections of quotations, cuts quotations short, and recontextualizes them and editorializes off them, and then he comes across words that contradict his interpretation, he doubles down and accuses them of being inconsistent and self-contradictory.
It would be fucking hilariously hamfisted propaganda if people like you, who I've never had issue with, are actually considering that maybe he's just a little biased perhaps. It's honestly too much. Please, just listen to Becker's podcast, specifically select only the Ukraine episodes to keep it short. Listen to them on 1.35 speed. Skip the parts about other topics. It's not that hard to show how much of a snake Rainer is being here.
I used to listen to Becker's program but i will admit i have let it slide somewhat since the Russia conflict started. That's why i was so surprised to read this from Rainer because it wasn't what i was expecting. I don't know what Rainer's motivation is but i will take your advice and be more critical when reading his attacks on other leftists. I still think he is correct on what he writes about supporting Russia, but he does seem to have a bit too much of an axe to grind with other leftists. Maybe it's because drama gets good engagement on social media. But that kind of thing is not to my liking, i think the more active leftist orgs we have the better, even if some of them are imperfect and sometimes skew too far toward either right opportunism or ultra leftism.
Thank you for taking the time to write actual responses and educate me instead of just dismissing me like some others have done here.
Becker and the PSL need to read this
The part about the world wars is such a blatantly false analogy that i really didn't want to believe it came from someone like Becker. Not only is the situation today nothing like the situation prior to WWI, when there was no single global imperialist hegemony and more importantly no socialist pole existed, but to claim that it was multipolarity that led to WWII really almost sounds like Nazi apologetics. If he truly thinks this way then he also thinks that the existence of the USSR itself - which represented an alternative pole of power to that of the western imperialists - was a bad thing. Also, he seems to forget that after both world wars socialism came out stronger, both resulted in the creation of more socialist states than had previously existed, and in a significant retreat of capitalism.
There is a fundamental difference between a multipolarity of competing imperialist powers and one of imperialism vs anti-imperialism. The US today simply will not allow the existence of any other imperialist poles of power, we see this clearly in how it has tightened the leash of its various vassals and made sure to subordinate Europe to its will so that it cannot ever become the independent pole of global power that the EU not too long ago dreamed of being. As such all those that are left outside of the hegemon's control are anti-imperialist, if not through ideology then by simple necessity and circumstance. And it is only outside of the suffocating grasp of the US's neoliberal hegemony that socialism can arise, let alone survive and flourish. It seems virtually everyone in the global south can see this, but for some reason many western leftists cannot.
I don't want to jump straight to accusations of chauvinism but there is definitely something wrong here.
Bruh, you don't wanna jump into accusations of chauvinism but accuse him of borderline nazi-apologetics? C'mon dude. Read my longer comment, Rainer is completely misrepresenting Becker.
Rainer Shea is misrepresenting Becker and the PSL. He's been doing this for awhile now. Don't read him unless you're doing oppo research and prepared to spend hours digging into sources and proving Shea is acting in bad faith
Your actions are literally indistinguishable from those of a federal agent, except that feds are less visibly incompetent.
Fed behavior is reinforcing the western imperialist narrative on the Russia-NATO conflict under the guise of ostensibly leftist language or treating it as some kind of "both sides bad" situation.
That doesn't make it incorrect.
(I'm also not aware the fed interpretation of the conflict is "both sides bad" so... that's a curious thought)
Feds know they can't convince socialists that NATO is good but it is enough for them if they convince you that both Russia and NATO are bad and that neither deserves your support.
@cfgaussian So in this logic, one is convinced that Nato is bad, but Nato still somehow wins. It wins, you see, by losing.
Man, I don't miss arguing with fundies.
@cfgaussian You know, I just realized this is the exact same argument used against "both parties are equally bad"
That is a false analogy.