I think this not only wrong but also ahistorical. Some left-wing groups from decades ago failed because they did not have enough support for fellow marginalized people. Organizations that bring in a wide coalition of oppressed people do better than those that maintain some level of racism and homophobia and sexism, etc etc, in order to try and appease what they perceive as a broadly reactionary working class. It’s actually quite funny, because this argument fails in its own internal reasoning: we must throw entire groups under the bus - which are, by the very nature of being ostracized, more likely to be anti-capitalist - in order to attempt to appease reactionaries who probably aren’t going to vote or support us anyway. If you follow this argument to its logical conclusion, following the most reactionary worker’s demands, you will inevitably end up as pro-capitalist, racist, sexist, transphobic, etc etc, and at that point… what are you even doing? You’re just Reactionary Party #243143. No, but we’re actually gonna do communism when we take power, I swear! With our party whose candidates are mostly white reactionaries, because everybody else has been… purged from the… oh. Oh no.
I think that this view is a common one among people on the liberal-to-left pipeline, which you appear to be on. It’s a byproduct of a liberal understanding of the world, and the media does its part in constantly reinforcing the idea that left-wing ideas are fundamentally unpopular among wide swathes of the population, who are ignorant, stupid, sexist racists, and so there must be compromise if you are to succeed.
this view is a common one among people on the liberal-to-left pipeline, which you appear to be on. It’s a byproduct of a liberal understanding of the world, and the media does its part in constantly reinforcing the idea that left-wing ideas are fundamentally unpopular among wide swathes of the population, who are ignorant, stupid, sexist racists, and so there must be compromise if you are to succeed.
I am literally observing an entire government that is against the very things that you
and I
want.
I would like a benevolent group of Anarcho Syndicalists to topple this government and kill capitalism in its tracks but that’s just not the reality we’re in. Fuck me for describing REALITY, huh?
The government, as in the state, is just the tool of the bourgeoisie as a class, as per Lenin’s description of the concept. Of course they’re going to support reactionary structures, that’s what keeps them in power.
Trust me, I know that you want a magic bullet solution to this whole thing. “Oh, the problem with the Left is just that they haven’t considered X as part of their strategy!” It doesn’t work. The only thing that works is the hard work of engendering class consciousness among the population. This has been THE central problem for left-wing movements in the imperial core for literally a century. Groups have tried the whole “Alright, we’ll be homophobic, we’ll be racist, if we just get white male workers to vote us into power and support us, and then we can do communism and improve conditions for everybody” thing. It never works. The party inevitably becomes corrupted by those same reactionary impulses.
It’s also not human nature, falling in doomer resignation about “Oh, humans are just cruel and selfish and tribal!” and giving up and playing video games all day also isn’t the answer - if it was, then no socialist revolution could have possibly worked, and they demonstrably have. It’s all part of how workers in the imperial core are conditioned by their relatively higher position above workers in the periphery and semi-periphery, as well as bourgeois propaganda that reinforces (but does not fundamentally create) fear that their meagre position in the imperial core will be taken away by minority groups, and they’ll have to live like a Pakistani textile worker. It all destroys class consciousness.
I think this not only wrong but also ahistorical. Some left-wing groups from decades ago failed because they did not have enough support for fellow marginalized people. Organizations that bring in a wide coalition of oppressed people do better than those that maintain some level of racism and homophobia and sexism, etc etc, in order to try and appease what they perceive as a broadly reactionary working class. It’s actually quite funny, because this argument fails in its own internal reasoning: we must throw entire groups under the bus - which are, by the very nature of being ostracized, more likely to be anti-capitalist - in order to attempt to appease reactionaries who probably aren’t going to vote or support us anyway. If you follow this argument to its logical conclusion, following the most reactionary worker’s demands, you will inevitably end up as pro-capitalist, racist, sexist, transphobic, etc etc, and at that point… what are you even doing? You’re just Reactionary Party #243143. No, but we’re actually gonna do communism when we take power, I swear! With our party whose candidates are mostly white reactionaries, because everybody else has been… purged from the… oh. Oh no.
I think that this view is a common one among people on the liberal-to-left pipeline, which you appear to be on. It’s a byproduct of a liberal understanding of the world, and the media does its part in constantly reinforcing the idea that left-wing ideas are fundamentally unpopular among wide swathes of the population, who are ignorant, stupid, sexist racists, and so there must be compromise if you are to succeed.
I am literally observing an entire government that is against the very things that you
and I
want.
I would like a benevolent group of Anarcho Syndicalists to topple this government and kill capitalism in its tracks but that’s just not the reality we’re in. Fuck me for describing REALITY, huh?
The government, as in the state, is just the tool of the bourgeoisie as a class, as per Lenin’s description of the concept. Of course they’re going to support reactionary structures, that’s what keeps them in power.
Trust me, I know that you want a magic bullet solution to this whole thing. “Oh, the problem with the Left is just that they haven’t considered X as part of their strategy!” It doesn’t work. The only thing that works is the hard work of engendering class consciousness among the population. This has been THE central problem for left-wing movements in the imperial core for literally a century. Groups have tried the whole “Alright, we’ll be homophobic, we’ll be racist, if we just get white male workers to vote us into power and support us, and then we can do communism and improve conditions for everybody” thing. It never works. The party inevitably becomes corrupted by those same reactionary impulses.
It’s also not human nature, falling in doomer resignation about “Oh, humans are just cruel and selfish and tribal!” and giving up and playing video games all day also isn’t the answer - if it was, then no socialist revolution could have possibly worked, and they demonstrably have. It’s all part of how workers in the imperial core are conditioned by their relatively higher position above workers in the periphery and semi-periphery, as well as bourgeois propaganda that reinforces (but does not fundamentally create) fear that their meagre position in the imperial core will be taken away by minority groups, and they’ll have to live like a Pakistani textile worker. It all destroys class consciousness.