To defeat the state, we in the core of imperialism need to make U.S. hegemony too weakened for our ruling class to be able to use it to hold back revolution. And to cripple the beast by attacking it from within its heart, we need to take away the social base Washington depends on to be able to maintain its global war machine; that social base being the U.S. working class.
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.