I was all into electoralism up until the 1-2 punch of Corbyn and Bernie getting screwed (and just straight up losing) within the span of 2 months. From there I thought electoralism still had it’s place but was thinking more about how we’ll never get to “vote” for socialism, and started leaning towards being an ML. And then recently, I’m just really down on the hope for any sort of internal change within the imperial core. I think change is going to have to be forced upon the global north by the global south. And even though Iive in the US, I just feel more and more disconnected from this place. I find I’m way more interested in what’s going on in places like Cuba, China, Good Korea, Peru, Bolivia, India, etc. I find myself not even really caring about US politics except for when it comes to issues of foreign policy.
And in my observation, it feels like a lot of comrades here seem to be following this trajectory.
Of course as I move along this path, I still don’t seem to have a really good feel on what I’m supposed to do, you know?
Yea circa 2016 my thought process was “America sucks, I hate living here” to “America sucks, it must be razed to the ground”
Giving up on workers in the most powerful parts of the world (no matter how pampered they are by capital) means just giving up and watching third world workers throw themselves at the empire’s tanks and jets over and over again until something different magically happens. It also implies that your revolutionary potential comes only from how exploited you are. If that were the case then socialist revolutions (not nationalist ones) would have happened in every former colony instead of just a few (like China or Burkina Faso) and that political consciousness isn’t real force.
Western workers have a responsibility to build a left in their countries that is capable of throwing its weight around instead of shirking that responsibility and turning leftism into a “its not happening, its too hard, someone else far away will do it”. Finally, if and when left revolutions do happen in the third world, they are likely to have mutate into nationalist reactions when the west attacks them. There is no future in which the left succeeds for good in which workers of the most industrialized countries are asleep.
There is no future in which the left succeeds for good in which workers of the most industrialized countries are asleep.
But which are the industrialized countries now? America has moved from industrial capitalism to financial capitalism.
US workers can stop US arms, its one of the few things they still make here
After the Bernie thing, someone posted in r/CTH a picture of Lenin with the text “where did all that being you, back to me…”. And then I started reading Lenin.
:back-to-me-shining: Memes work.
I’ll be honest, seeing that meme after Corbyn losing with the caption, “the tankies are right once again,” got me interested in hearing what the tankies had to say, lol.
When change is forced upon the global north, it will still be an internal change, just one triggered by external conditions. And that internal change, whenever it happens, will need local principled and organized communists. So, the thing to do is the same as always, educate yourself and others, agitate, organize.
This is really good, because as a white person in the global north, while I agree with third worldism it can also make me feel kinda useless.
Someone has to drive towards balkanization and also organize mutual aid groups to support those in need. I get that feeling of helplessness, but thankfully there is very real work to be done in the core.
if you want to do a revolution then why would you want to force balkanization, it would just make it easier for reaction.
It’s less wanting it to balkanize and more that I don’t believe the contradictions of the American empire will allow it to stay united once it reaches a breaking point sufficient for revolution.
The best thing the United States can do for the world is balkanize and die. I agree that revolution will not come from the imperial core; the American civil religion is too strong to break while the state (which has been entirely captured by capitalists) exists. If all my friends and family weren’t in this godforesaken country I would leave yesterday tbh.
Is pushing an anti-imperialist movement within the imperial core worth it? I think it’s the best thing we can do right now
Yeah, everything we can do to prevent the US from fucking with other countries is absolutely worth it. That said, the biggest protest in American history was in 2003 against the Iraq War and it didn’t change shit so I’m very skeptical of the ability for us to change foreign policy calculus in the United States.
Everything builds on itself. Also, Iraq war protests were fairly divorced from labor organizing, any major protests in the next decade or so will have a very different relationship to labor. Without that, yelling in the streets doesn’t do much
The real horseshoe theory is when you go past Maoist/Third Worldist and end up back at anarchism because the best thing to do from within the imperial core is to prioritizing dismantling the whole thing and building mutual aid networks to support people that will otherwise either suffer and die or be caught up by reactionaries.
What you said is probably the best you can and should do as an individual atomized from political power and without a coherent left mass movement to latch onto.
This doesn’t seem incompatible with Maoism at all. Gotta adapt to your conditions and shit
Yeah I think there’s definitely synthesis to be found with Maoism and anarchism especially with regard to mass line tactics.
Hard agree. Of all the ML tendencies, I vibe best with Maoists. Those mfs are wild.
