cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/58586
Reviewing the fallout over Gabriel Rockhill’s critiques of Western Marxism, Donald Parkinson argues the controversy is ultimately a battle over what kind of intellectual culture the left needs.
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Hot take but I think communists have masturbated over theory for long enough that people need to accept you’re not going to intellectualize or theorize your way into a revolution happening. Like, this shit? There’s some debate about western Marxism? Some guy is mad about some criticism? who cares, we are all gonna die
I’m going to give light pushback because I get the sentiment, but I disagree 100%. I think that we are too lost in trying to achieve something with shitty parties and shitty theories and are losing for that reason. We really have to find some way to make the message work by finding ways to make our goals and theories seem not just sensible, but nonsense to not believe. Our work is still theoretical, not because we need intellectuals but because our actions have to feel like a natural extension of the classes we support instead of needing the translation. It’s hard work too, otherwise we’d be done
I think we are running into the wall of you can’t theorize yourself out of a prison, and it isn’t a matter of finding the right theory because the right theory still isn’t going to kill a guard or climb you out
Edit: even what you’re saying isn’t a matter of finding the hidden True Theory, it’s a propaganda and mass psychology issue that also has real world material limitations placed in how we can deal with it (we can’t just magic a tiktok or TV media out of our assholes, and even if we did that only solves outreach and not the propaganda and mass psychology components necessary to convince people) but the theory itself is at present adequate
What do you think we should do then?
Tbh i think we’re just totally absolutely fucked unless China or others use serious state assets to support us, because the sheer scale of coordination and necessary materiel to confront the bourgeoisie is just too great. Im straight doomed up, dawg. I think the best I should reasonably expect to see in my lifetime is fascist, reactionary balkanization of the U.S. over absolute fucking nonsense. I expect to be killed over something so absurd it could only be described as the results of a clown society in hell
P.s. this doesn’t imply I think Chinese support would be a magic bullet either and it would play into
EVIL FOREIGN INFLUENCE rhetoric too, i just think, like, it’s just not happening without resources that the working class today simply does not have. We are all too desperate.
Edit: sorry i know this isn’t helpful but also at the same time i read “what is at stake in the western Marxism debate” and i can’t help but think “literally nothing of importance”
This is not how problem solving works, in any field, at any time.
Understanding of socialist theory and history is essential to affective socialist movement. In order to plan ahead and be affective, you must have a coherent and cohesive record of what was tried, and the thought processes around those methods.
If you look at it from this absurdly high level, then yeah, it’s gonna look impossible. And maybe it is impossible. However, you have no way of knowing that.
And you have theories, such as “I can reasonably expect the U.S. to balkanize into a bunch of separate fascist entities.” but I don’t know where you are getting these ideas from. I can hypothesize that it is mix of ad hoc historical knowledge combined with popular fictional culture war media, but getting people to even commit to basic social engagements is a chore, the idea that people will have the wherewithal and energy to physically balkanize is genuinely absurd and hilarious to me.
More likely is the continuation of the legal balkanization that we are already experiencing, which makes sense when view through Lenin’s Theory of Imperialism as much more that simply a system of colonial expansion, but as a system of laws that govern one area significantly different than another area within a single national entity. The creation of ‘frontiers’ for capital.
sigh, no, I said “the best i should reasonably expect”
my incorrect and obviously never gonna happen “physical” balkanization
your materialistic and currently in progress “legal” balkanization
nevermind I only said “balkanization”
The question over this ‘legal balkanization’ process lies more in exactly how far is it going to go, and is it going to be applied only geographically.
And yes, the distinctions do matter, as a state undergoing legal balkanization is not necessarily at civil war, whereas a physical balkanization requires a civil war.
why even be communist then
because I’m not bourgeois, the labor theory of value succinctly explains where all real value actually comes from, the overwhelming majority of people are in some stage of being exploited or another, and I’m good at deluding myself but not good enough to just, like, ignore that
Anyone can recognize they are being exploited. That’s not what makes a communist. Communist also think that there is something that can be don’t about exploitation. If you think that nothing is to be done, then what is the point. This is liberalism.
thinking that the expropriation of the means of production from the bourgeoisie is probably impossible in the West at the rate we’re going (and definitely not helped by this apparent continued need for sitting around re-hashing theory like that will achieve anything) doesn’t mean a person doesn’t still conceptually support that thing happening. Thinking “wow we’re so fucked that probably isn’t happening” isn’t “liberalism”
my statement wasn’t “I’m a communist because i recognize my own exploitation” btw it was specifically I cannot delude myself into ignoring the inherent evils of capitalism. If you’re in a world where the overwhelmingly vast majority of people are basically slaves with more steps and there is an ideological and material framework that fixes that and you don’t support it despite full knowledge of that then idk imo you deserve to be flayed alive. I’m a shithead but I’m not “flay me alive” shitty. My recognizance of the constant and widespread oppression around me, including but not limited to my own oppression, is a factor in why I am a communist but not itself the singular reason.
Tbf marx’a position in 1848-9 wasnt much different. He (and engels) argued proletarian revolution would require a napoleon-type world war between bourgeois revolutionary france and germany and britain+russia giving the proletariat of all european countries the opporunity to rise up. Marx’s new years greeting in his newspaper for 1849 therefore hoped for a world war, which never came and so the various proletarian revolutions were strangled in their cradles
This, but I think the coastal areas will arc toward social democracy if that happens. The process between here and there would be violent and fashy like you said. Many areas of north America will remain violent and fashy until they peter out and/or make it everyone else’s problem along the way. Obviously for those are in a particularly fashy area without the ability to leave it might get fucked up.
I’m curious to know if SWCC will lay the foundation to a new socialist global order made up of the global south over the next several decades. If there is a socdem US or balkanized socdem republics of the former US, they could make up the right wing of the new socialist order (there will be lib shit ever more, but the only thing less sustainable than a liberal economy is outright fascism).