I’m just not seeing the argument apart from a pessimistic/accelerationist argument. Fascism is not going to make construction of socialism easier; I don’t see how it won’t make it immeasurably more difficult. Even if fascism is inevitable, you’d also have to argue that it should be sped up, which is where it just doesn’t seem like a serious argument to me, because surely the European working class should be given and requires more time to develop?
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Yeah not to suggest that leftists have not always had something of a tendency for division and degeneration into critique to the detriment of constructive solidarity, but this is also not sufficient as an explanation in my opinion. If anything, I’d argue that the contemporary version of this phenomenon, especially in a country life America, is deeply mediated by the social groups that radical groups is emerging out of, and fact it is occurring in a cultural and intellectual climate that is still (and has been since the late 80s), not simply anti-Marxist/communist but actually post-communist. We might nuance this by noting an uptick in interest in socialism among the young and working class, but we should not overemphasize the scale or influence of this. Nor should this lead us to lose sight of the fact that a lot of the young people who identify as radical do so in a way that can be quite vague, and have more to do with individual lifestyle aesthetics than a sense of ‘calling’ for the militant path, nor a sense of direct exploitation. This is partly due to the greater presence or visibility in popular culture of ideas that are more just post-modern liberal identity politics marked for the sake of capitalism, and the corresponding greater influence of radleft and anti-marxist poststructural thinkers in what is presented as radical thought. Which should remind everyone that Marxist and Communist politics are not going to be bred in Universities any more. Marxist historians don’t control the history department as much as they used to in some placed. This is not a personal criticism of all these people but more a recognition of the different reasons, conditions and paths that form of the context of people’s experience of radical politics or thought.
What is more significant is the increased level of labor movement activity. A bolshevik style party cannot simply be willed into existence. It is not a vanguard phenomenon (by definition) because it is ‘above’ or separate to the working class like a set of generals or the state, which would be to misunderstand the military metaphor, but because it is supposed to position itself at the forefront of working-class struggle. It is suppose to identify the key areas of struggle and potential and to act accordingly. So it strikes me that American Bolshevism (album title) would have to be born more fully out of the concrete struggle between an emerging American labor movement, in conjunction and synthesis with groups who also emphasize imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism, racist and gender and LGBT+ struggles.
Alot of these dynamics reinforce themselves in vicious ways too. Bad interpersonal relationships can generate bad politics and vice-versa.
For what its worth, by far the least sectarian environments I’ve encountered where ones where different militants from different orgs had to collectively organize or help on the group in relation to on-the-ground labor struggles in work places.
I’m not sure why you feel the need to be aggressive comrade. What you’ve described is certainly a real and alienating phenomenon, though I’m guessing you are making reference to the American trotskyist culture, which is somewhat distinct from those in other countries, largely because the history is different, and American trostkyists seem to have been less connected to working class organizations and under even more pressure to conform to Cold War narratives and positions. I’m more familiar with the Latin American and European cases, in which they are by far the most seriously present communist groups in those countries. For example a lot of people here love repping France every time there’s another episode of social unrest, but do not realize that a lot of the organization is being done by trot groups. Again, there are a lot of them, and i’d agree that most are very far from great, but they would agree with that statement themselves.
On the newspaper point: there’s nothing wrong with trying to get literature out there. The question is more one of form. Again, I can think of as many ML and weird left-com and Maoist groups who do the same thing. If that’s sufficient for you to judge all Trots on that basis, then it should be for those other groups, which I suspect is not the case.
Kind of weird and 3edgy4me how that’s not really related to my point but go-off I guess. Kind of weird and disturbing honestly to be wishing (it seems) for their collective demise.
I’m not a trot but as someone who has known alot of them, honestly in this day and age if you’re really under the impression that most people who thinks of themselves as trots are going to become neoconservatives then honestly my suspicion is that you do not actually know many. It might be worth pointing out that while the most annoying and sectarian, indeedly dogmatically detached self-described communists I’ve met are Trotskyist, so are several of the more serious, capable, dedicated militants I’ve met.
If you really wanna spend your time swinging against them instead of considering forming solidarity over a common Marxist and Leninist tradition (you might not think that they are leninists, but they certainly think they are) and discussing non-sectarian methods of organizing, then with respect comrade I really feel your point of view is limited and needs to develop, though I don’t know how much experience you actually have engaging with, or actually trying to organize with, trots.
Whether you agree with them or not, most actual militants who are Trotskyists have their ideals in the right place. On a moral or ethical level, most of them are motivated by the same disgust with capitalist society and same hopes for a communist society as other communists. On a political level they are normally also self-consciously Leninist. In fact the reason they have such a tendency to splits and factions is because there’s an almost theological emphasis on the need to recreate continuously that genesis of the Bolshevik through splits with those they perceive (even if metaphorically) as Mensheviks and reformists, so that the part remains in a correct revolutionary position necessary at the revolutionary conjuncture. I’m in strong ideological disagreement on a bunch of points, and don’t really like their culture, including that of their interpersonal relationships, but frankly that’s not a problem unique to Trotskysists (Maoists, MLs and anarchists I’m looking at you).
Also, frankly, there’s no surer way to alienate potential communists from what you’re doing that to be beefing over the political conflicts in the Soviet Union of the 20s and 30s. I’m not really able to see it as anything other than self-indulgent, given that it seems obvious that a mature position would include very serious critiques of both Trotskyism and the USSR (for the record, if you talk to more intelligent Trots, they often have several quite scathing critiques of several of Trotsky’s positions).
Interesting example of how neoliberal strategies of extending the reach of financial instruments seems to inevitably come for the lower and middle classes’ (or broad working class’s) savings.
I haven’t had the time to look at the proposals in any detail, but in essence, it seems that he’s just restating the classic economic logic that the source of investment is savings, and so if there is a mismatch between them, this will cause a negative output gap in growth, both due to demand and suppl-side factors. It is also obviously motivated by the concerns of mainstream economists that the lagging productivity (in particular of labor, because labour is the source of all value and how they form a common unit of value and productivity measurement, as Marx understood) is a serious issue and that AI is the way to deal with it. Also interesting the classic decrepit European realization that they are falling behind the US and China (and Russia, for that matter) on these fronts. Though it is strange how that ignores other key factors determining investment, like expected returns and interest rates (which are rising). Also, if private businesses are already unwilling to invest because they know that savings and income are too low, and people not willing enough to engage in borrowing sprees, to make their expected returns on investment profitable, then how would an investment fund financed with savings deal with this issue? He might argue that more efficient capital markets and new investment vehicles leverage savings might deal with that, but it is again not clear to me that the private sector is going to be that motivated. Most of the interest of private firms so far in AI has been either in superficial labor-saving areas like branding, website design, and potentially in more efficient systems of labor surveillance, monitoring, control and time-management, as opposed to any real tremendous gains in real labor productivity, though the future is ofc an unknown country. It also seems to ignore the naturally monopolistic tendencies of a sector like investment in advanced AI software and hardware, which would not suggest to me that the Europeans can easily compete with the US or China, who have a head-start in terms of concentration, advantages of scale and greater levels of government support.
Funny also how none of the French liberals are asking which social group’s savings are going to bear the brunt of this. There is ofc no mention of the trillions in the bourgeoisie’s offshore bank accounts. Given the high rates of taxes (at least perceived) in France already it’s not clear how this would be popular with anybody.
Daddy chill
It might also just accelerate the fascicisation of Europe, which is likely good for no-one, let alone for Europe’s working class. Unless one’s holds to some kind of accelerationist theory of revolutionary conditions.
Sometimes I do really wonder how many Trotskyists people have actually met.
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If you think this doesn’t exist then you haven’t spent enough time differentiating Marxism from liberal identity politics.
Does anyone know if the reports their ambassadors used to sell drugs when on trips, and that they sell meth internationally, has any truth to it?
Red Fash is literally so funny to me as a concept. Peak horseshoe theory brain.
No better way to know that a supposed ‘socialist’ is a liberal reactionary snaking in the grass than when they use this concept.
Also imagine turning around and saying ‘hate of fascists, imperialism and slavery is the real evil, akschually sweety’.
yeah I mean senile pederastic ethnic-cleansing enabler seems a difficult sell atm tbf. This aint quite the Roman Empire.
There’s debate on whether he himself was a pedophile/pederast/whateva you want to call it. But he was still explicitly justifying pederastic practices publically in a country where there was already a great degree of acceptance of it among the bourgeois literary avant garde. An acceptance, which, btw, you will never find as far as I’m aware in any proletarian literary or philosophical traditions. No organic Marxist intellectual would tolerate these ideas for a second.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petitions_against_age_of_consent_laws
Yeah mans was a piece of garbage. The older he got the more reactionary his politics and the more idealistic and maturbatory he became. If what people are interested is in his earlier, more structuralist work, then frankly they can find that elsewhere. If they are interested in his later work on sexuality, well frankly there are far better works on the history of sexuality. And that’s not even touching his politics (that of a self-indulgent petit pourgeois pseudo-radical who clearly deeply distrusted the working class) or his personal life. There’s been alot of debate of it, but frankly I think it’s clear that Foucault had clear preferences over socialist alternatives for the form of Neoliberal culture and ideology that was emerging in the late 70s and 80s, given that that he saw it as genuinely opening up new fields of possible identities and practices. Whether that is true is, in a sense, secondary, as it reveals a lot about his thoroughly un-Marxist understanding of the relationship between politics and identity, and ignores the question and what would be sacrificed in that process. Frankly he was an individualist to the bone.
I was recently reading Maurice Godelier (an actual great French Marxist anthropologist), and in a foreword he wrote in the late 70s he speaks with utter and justified contempt of the useless petit bourgeois masturbation of Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze and Guatari, speaking about it as basically already outdated. The thing is that he was correct. These thinkers were revitalized due to their being taken up in during the Neoliberal period beginning at the end of the 70s, notably in the US under the guise of ‘French Theory’, and was then imported back into France. In other words the favoring of these theories over Marxism in the disproportionately influential American bourgeois academy contributed to reestablishing the legitimacy of these theories in their country of origin.
People really need to ask themselves why the bourgeois academy, and reactionary bourgeois academics, and so infatuated with these thinkers and why they are willing to have entire courses on them whereas there is nothing similar when it comes to Marxism, despite the fact that the latter is one of if not the most influential political tradition of the 20th century, and that Marx is one of if not the most influential philosopher of the last several hundred years. The reason is that they provide the perfect web of intellectual masturbation in which people can think that they are doing or thinking something politically and socially radical, when frankly there is not actual much original contribution of value in their work. All the worthwhile comments of Foucault on the nature of science can be found in other, superior thinkers of the Historical Epistemology School or among Marxists of the time and before.
Honestly it’s especially infuriating given how much pernicious influence this has had on the modern social sciences and humanities. As an example, I was recently having a conversation with a bourgeois, liberal historian, and they were essentially saying that my application of Marxist concepts to the past was ‘anachronistic’ because I was applying a ‘metanarrative’ to explanation of the past, by trying to apply a general model to explain historical phenomenon, and that capitalism was “not a concept at the time”. Like motherfucker. Adam Smith never uses the word capitalism. So did it not exist as a social phenomenon at the time? Did neutrons not exist before we theorized them? Honestly the intellectual level of the social sciences and humanities in the West has declined to such a degree that literal leading fucking professors are not able to think in concepts but just in words based on the most braindead social and linguistic relativism applied to theoretical entities or the references of the terms of our theories that we’d normally only hope to expect from an edgy teenager reading Nietzsche. For him, and many others, history has increasingly become the actitivity of collecting more and more particular, minute details without daring to use them in a broader structure for explanation. He was literally basically defining history as anti-scientific, and it’s not surprising given that frankly I’m not sure how anyone can seriously study history and not come out with a generally Marxist POV, and given he is a bourgeois liberal who therefore has to avoid Marxism at all cost, so therefore obviously the history he does will be theoretically weak af. Another point here is that he is a liberal who is not explicitly postmodern or poststructural in orientation, but is still so influenced by and so passive towards that general culture in the social sciences and humanities that he nevertheless shares their anti-scientific conception of social science.
And YES, Foucault did explicitly justify pedophilia. Whether he ever committed those acts is something that is uncertain, but fuck him regardless.
I recommend reading the following:
https://mronline.org/2021/12/31/the-fbi-file-on-foucault/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petitions_against_age_of_consent_laws
Isn’t Trump is leading in 5/6 swing states in recent polls?
yh deffo makes me think of the fanciful story from St. Augustine of the pirate taken prisoner by Alexander the Great. Alexander asks him how he dares molest the seas, and the pirate asks him the same questiom: “I molest a small part with a few ships, and am called a pirate; you molest the whole world, and they call you emperor”.
Honestly my suspicion is that this is the main reason why the liberal state bureaucrats have not already put orange-boi behind bars. Like they must be at least a bit aware that if they do when he’s so clearly the favorite that it would have serious repercussions in terms of their legitimacy and that of Trump and the associated faction of the Republicans.
If anything I’ve read too much theory comrade. I’m fully familiar with the arguments you’re citing, though personally I disagree. I disgree with the third-word The Leninist concept of labor aristocracy, though useful (which is not to say we can’t disagree with Lenin: he was a man of his time and what wrong on several points, though not the most important), I think often gets used in a really metaphysical and binary way. The Western proletariat certainly has advantageous conditions of life which are due to imperialism. That goes without saying. However no-where in what Lenin writes, not according to class interest, must the Western proletariat necessarily perceive I think people often make far too much of the idea that the Western working class consciously knows exactly what its supposedly reactionary interests are in that way. That’s not the way that class is lived or experienced. At times that might come through, such as when they vote for the far right in elections during a recession and high levels of immigration, but I think it’s a big assumption to suppose that their have a perfect understanding of their class interest when they do that. They certainly don’t seem to have a rational grasp on it when you speak to them, and so the only way of supporting the argument then seems to me to be to argue that there is some subconscious, structural or superstructural determination of their reactionary positions as in their class interest whether they are conscious of this or not; but this seems deeply unscientific and unverifiable to me - regardless, I think there a bunch of basic arguments, including from Marx himself, which make clear that it is the very nature of capitalism, understood in terms of its class system, which makes the class interests of the working class opposed to that of their bourgeoisie.
The Western proletariat does have a class interest in ending capitalism. The large majority of them have not seen their living standards increase since the 70s, and I strongly believe that their conditions of life would be far healthier and more fulfilling were they to live in socialist and communist societies. Otherwise my fear is that we’re using a very reductive understanding of what class interest or quality of life means, making it excessively consumerist, thereby reproducing mystifying capitalist categories. My fear is that it devolves in a stereotype of vulgar materialism, as opposed to the far more open method of historical materialism which Marx uses (I’m not going to touch on dialectical materialism as that’s more controversial a concept).
Practically, it seems to negate a really basic and essential for of solidarity, and would suggest that every communist in the West should give up, leave the West, or wish for the death of their loved ones. Even practically I don’t see it as a coherent strategy, given not only the previous comment but also because the idea that the working classes of the Global South are consciously very progressive politically is unfortunately often not the case, which is clear to anyone who has lived outside of the West. This is ofc a different point to whether or not there are geopolitical and global economic processes which lead certain geopolitical blocs or their working class populations to take certain views and positions which are progressive as historical material movements. For instance I can simultaneously say at Hamas and the Houthis, in their domestic contexts, are high reactionary in a bunch of ways, while also recognizing that their struggles against Israel and US imperialism are very progressive as far as geopolitics goes. I’d argue that Russia is more ambiguous. I still think that a fully successful communist revolution must be global and so will require a revolution in the imperial core, as Marx, Engels, Lenin, and most communists have thought.
I also think there’s some ambiguity in what we mean by ‘strong’ and ‘develop past neoliberalism’ in what you’ve written. Neoliberalism was a political process of change in policy to reestablish conditions of profitability through programs of austerity. It’s not a different kind of mode of production. It’s still capitalism. This is historical and therefore can, and will, end. Other modes of production will emerge. So I guess you might be suggesting that the West will simply go fascist? I’m also add that I don’t think that revolutions are simply matters of the military strength of the power, but broader socio-economic conditions, though if the question is whether the conditions of the working class will need to become more critical before revolutionary conditions emerge, then I’d certainly agree. Nevertheless that doesn’t imply that the immediate target should be the immiseration of the Western working class.
Obviously this is a theoretical disagreement, not a personal attack. Feel free to let me know what you think comrade.