Because I said there's no united front with social democrats because they aren't leftists.
I do not even.
Eh... I mean, no offence but this is all aesthetics. All our little sectarian camps and tribes aren't worth a damn because they're first and foremost intellectual / cultural movements. There's no mass working class energy to back any of them up one way or another.
At this point getting mad about the hypothetical strategic relationships between different left-of-center groups in a revolutionary scenario is like getting mad about the power rangers teaming up with the teenage mutant ninja turtles, those revisionists.
they’re first and foremost intellectual / cultural movements
:gramsci-heh: tried to warn us.
Sure, fine, but what does that actually mean in the context of a reddit pissing match, other than a license to get pissed off?
Like go ahead and dunk on them, but let's not pretend it's anything more than different academic camps fighting over things they can't control, for not much better a reason than they're bored and arguing gives them a cathartic outlet for their powerlessness.
If you're starting from the assumption that it's a book club then it doesn't matter anyway
My point is that if it's a serious org, it's not starting from the assumption of being a book club
idk how much your point stands irl when you consider that any active, useful communist party even from the time of its irrelevancy and up to its heights and successes, either in the west or in the developing world, agitated against and shitted on social democracy (to use ops example) with often the same slogans and arguments that you see on reddit and twitter beefs . It dedicated both intellectual and manual labour to oppose that "camp" no matter the presence or not of a "mass political movement" or how far from a revolution they were.
If it mattered and was a correct and crucial position in some point in the political lifespan of those parties and movements (and it usualy was) then it retroactively makes any random past communist repeating it , holding onto it, propagandizing for it or even getting into petty beefs over it, not just an aesthetic excersice no matter the media or cultural context it happens. It makes it part of helping keep alive useful analysis and positions to questions that arise time and time again in the revolutionary experience of an ideology .
Believe it or not in the absense of active revolutionary situations,of mass politics and of recent successufly revolutionary experience its (to a point) useful for such questions and past struggles to be repeated within leftist discourse, especially in a left so online, inexperienced , averse to reading history and theory and often anti-communist as the American left. It is the present equivalent of different leftists intellectuals and camps 100 years ago infighting via pitty verbose articles and tavern speeches even decades before they come close to power. So if those correct positions and analysis regarding social democracy lets say arent present in the currect online leftist spaces , if i dont see people shitfighting over them ,then they wont somehow arise irl when a time comes that a radical leftist movement will be in a position to act and said questions arise.
I mean arguments are gonna happen no matter what, so you may as well argue the correct anti-imperialist stances I guess.
I just tend to roll my eyes at this weird messianic streak I see in a lot of american leftists who put ideology ahead of material conditions, thinking that if only everyone thought as I do, we could save the world.
Plus I honestly don't think there's ever going to be a coherent mass socialist movement in the U.S. It'll break apart into squabbling rump states first. You may get socialist movements out of those, but that's a different conext entirely.
I honestly don’t think there’s ever going to be a coherent mass socialist movement in the U.S
Well dispite that being a likely case ,communists in america have no choice but to act in the exact same way they would if it was possible or not act at all.
I just tend to roll my eyes at this weird messianic streak I see in a lot of american leftists who put ideology ahead of material conditions, thinking that if only everyone thought as I do, we could save the world.
One read of this is that in some online argument between leftists putting "material conditions ahead" means basicaly nothing . What is it ,how are you supposed to literally do that online ? Its not part of organizing and acting in real life so by definition whatever you chose to talk or argue about it isnt putting material conditions ahead or behind. So is not arguing at all or not posting "putting material conditions first"?
Another read is that to a degree "if only everyone thought as I do, we could save the world" IS what socialists, anarchists and communists believe and act from since forever. In the sense of "We have to do everything we can to eventualy have the working class embracing and marching along Marxist-Leninist/ Anarchist/ Syndicalist ideological lines in order to transform the world and achieve our goals".
So when a marxist lenninist lets say agitates and argues against social democracy on various levels, offline or online, they are putting material conditions first in their view since they of course believe that the left will have the best chances of success in eventualy changing the material conditions of the working class if it follows and adopts leninist tactics, theory and positions. So fighting for that position to be more dominant in the discourse and dissuading as many leftists as they can from the wrong position if they see it stated IS both ideological of course and "putting material conditions first".
What behaviors and positions you or some other leftists considers "not putting material conditions first" is too highly ideological. A leftist saying "we should go for as much left unity as possible including socdems" , "now its not the time for this" or "we shouldnt argue online at all it doesnt matter and is just aesthetics" or "arguing online over social democrats being allies or not is being an ideologue and not putting material conditions first" is basing it on their ideological beliefs on how the left "should act" or what is or isnt a waste of time
Friend that's a lot of words defending reddit arguments, and I really don't have the emotional bandwidth right now to digest all of it. My take on posting is that we're all hopeless wretches addicted to monetized reaction machines and that we should burn web 3.0 to the ground and salt the earth. But if you think getting into doctrinal social media fights is worth your time, then by all means, genuinely, you do you.
"getting into reddit posting fights is a waste of time" is hard to argue against
But come on, you basicaly used that springboard to rant about how any leftist strongly holding an obvious and relevant for most communists worldwide and historicaly position like the one OP mentioned ("social democracy sucks and socdems arent to be allied with") and arguing for it anywhere rn in America (including when you see some releveant discussion online) is some counterproductive heavily ideological messianic pathology that puts material conditions second
I think what's getting lost in translation here is I'm making critiques of individuals, not organizations. I want and expect left orgs like DSA and PSL to have an explicitly anti-imperialist position and announce so to the world.
But individual actors arguing with each other online, especially on reddit, is just jacking off in the wind. It's a demonstration of loyalty to your chosen ideological tribe, which on an individual level is about as meaningful as arguing over whether xbox is better than playstation
These are the folks that will sell you out to cops and get your comrades killed.
Whenever I get called a tankie nowadays, I just go like "Yes I'm a tankie because I support sending tanks to Ukraine. You're a putin shill" and report them for supporting Russia.
"social democrats aren't leftists" really looks like unreasonable extremist purity testing if you don't know the exact theo...
on r/marxism, you say?
stupid tankie, reading history books and learning that SocDems always end up traitors to anti capitalists.
Which is their argument but presented hysterically like :kitty-cri-screm: is posting it.
"it's ok, us libs will use Obamawords to win over the capitalists minds and heart, tankie."
I keep telling people that understanding that particular phrase is essential to understanding the posting culture here, but ya'll think I'm kidding and it exists outside of this space.
Also technically quoting Stalin is 'tankie' so good on them for recognizing it.
Understanding it is a fool's errand because it's woke for liberals. Its meaning changes every time someone screeches it and it only exists to make their form of liberalism seem common sense.
the Hungary revolution was famous for happening while Stalin was alive, therefore he is a tankie
Lol true, just that he is the most infamous 'kill-count' communist other than like, Mao, for libs.
5 kajillion dead and counting; but every death under capitalism was the fault of the individual
r/communism and r/communism101 are also questionable. Lots of people getting banned over nothing, even if they never posted in those subs.
That said, in my limited experience r/Marxism is one of the better Marxist subs
you where called tankie by social democrats , moderate faschist , dont fret they can only hurt you Hypothetical.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will hurt forever
Historically, it's the fascists that they can only hurt hypothetically
/r/trueanon, /r/thedeprogram, /r/blackwolffeed - although I suspect that the crossover between those subs and here is over 50%.
It's quite depressing that the only places you can be a communist online are fan subs for podcasts.
I suspect that the crossover between those subs and here is over 50%.
You should try testing that suspicion by mentioning Hexbear and seeing what happens
I said there’s no united front with social democrats because they aren’t leftists.
There's a fundamental problem with going into a conversation, pointing at a vague niche internally devisive term, and then crowing about how you'll NEVER align with them because they aren't TRUE BELIEVERS.
Because... yes you will. At the end of the day, if you've got a crowd of anti-war activists assembling on the front lawn of some congressman's building, which one of you assholes is going to pick up and go home the moment a guy in a DSA hat shows up?
When you've got a food drive for the struggling members of your community, and somebody shows up in a car with a "IN THIS HOUSE" bumper sticker on the back, what are you going to do? Send them away? No you fucking aren't.
If you're trying to protect your neighborhood from some thuggish cops or creepy sexpest landlords, and a few kids sporting Bernie Sanders t-shirts show up to join the fight, how are you going to respond? Are you going to shout at them for being electoralist? Are you going to point a gun at them and tell them to leave? Not unless you're a fucking psycho.
So drop the Terminally Online Act. None of this shit is serious.
Let’s start r/sharxism and be the only true sharxists. Because no one (yet) claims to be sharxist 🦈
SINK THE YACHS, DROWNING THE BORGIOUSIE IS THE ONLY TRUE PRAXIS
I need to learn more, but wasn't Stalin a proponent for the united front against fash? The USSR did work with the burgers and the bongs during WWII after all.
Yes, at first the Komintern took the stance that they were 'social-fascists' — finding them in support of capitalism, they deemed socdems unfit for fighting fascism, and only an ML party could lead the proletariat against it. This was their position in 1924. In 1928 they went so far as to call socialdemocracy a supporter and fellow traveller of fascism.
In 1935 they changed their position and called for a united front with socialdemocrats against fascism. If you want to satisfy a historical curiosity for their reasoning you can read Dimitrov's The fascist offensive [...]
To me, this is a big part of why leaning too hard on the "social democracy is fascism" line is a bad idea.
- It was a highly specific comment to begin with
- It was abandoned in favor of anti-fascist cooperation within a decade
- Today, it makes you sound like a crank unless your audience knows a decent amount of early Soviet history and agrees with you already
- Even among people who kind of know what you're getting at, it's more divisive than useful
If you want to criticize a group for bad stances on imperialism, or a government for a bad imperialist record, just do that.
I think long titles are fun so long as there's an easy way to refer to it briefly. One of my favorite novels (novellas?) is The Pilgrim's Progress, the full title of which is:
The Pilgrims Progress from This World to That which is to come: Delivered under the Similitude of a Dream Wherein is Discovered, the manner of his letting out; His Desired Journey; And His Safe Arrival at the Desired Countrey.
With that capitalization -- though depending on how you interpret fonts there may be some all-caps words -- and punctuation.
but FDR actually did radical stuff like packing the supreme court with vaguely proletarian judges
(Bernie voice) "yes I'm a tankie, if those slave oligarchs in Texas want to secede, I support sending tanks to preserve the union."
