#contradictory leftism

[a-very-tired-jew]

Maintaining the illusion of being a good person

Since 10/7 there has been a consistent thread that the UN is an arbiter of truth, or something, regarding the conflict because it was reprimanding Israel (and has consistently done so in the past). As such, I often heard from activists that because the UN said something it must be accepted as truth. Now with the publishing of the UN’s report of sexual violence on 10/7 and its findings, I am currently seeing various activists backtrack. Suddenly the UN is no longer trustworthy. Suddenly it’s a corrupt entity run by the Jews Zionists and the report needs to be dismissed as Jewish Zionist propaganda.

It’s almost like their endorsement and justification of violent resistance through any means necessary was a fantasy. Any means necessary doesn’t actually mean that. No “good” resistance fighter against a the colonial oppressor would actually commit atrocities against civilians, right? At least, not in their fantasy uprising.

But it happened, and it has been independently confirmed by one of the organizations they’ve routinely turned to. Now many of these have to deal with the cognitive dissonance that they’re actually not the “good” person they believed they were. Their past comments about believing all victims, supporting victims, that sexual assault is a horrific and people who commit it are monsters, etc… all of that is contradicted by this report.

It’s almost like they either didn’t understand what they were actually endorsing and justifying or they’re realizing that they’re hypocrites masquerading as good people for morality points.

[a-very-tired-jew]

I know a few people are saying this is a troll. I'm of the mind it could be a 50/50 chance of troll vs not troll. Why? I'm in a variety of activist spaces and they hem and haw when rape of Israelis by Hamas and associates is brought up. When the first reports showed up in November they quickly went from "believe all victims" to "question if Israelis are actually victims". This position correlates with their repeated justification of all violent resistance is valid (implying that sexual assault is therefore a valid method). Multiple times I saw some version of "Even if Hamas did do this, it doesn't mean their actions are bad. All forms of resistance are valid." I even saw one person even try to say that accusing Hamas of sexual violence was Islamophobic.

These spaces also clamored for victim accounts and denied the veracity of medical personnel and responder reports. Since the latest interviews with hostages have come out about the sexual violence they experienced these spaces have banned anyone bringing it up because it causes cognitive dissonance. Having to justify sexual violence against people is at odds with many of their beliefs. What they have posted is the recently outed as falsified stories by Al Jazeera, and these spaces have not retracted them either. So while this is my personal experience, and anecdotes are not the best evidence, there's enough incidents out there to indicate that even if this is a bait, there are people who believe this.

"sexual assault isn't ressistance" seriously stop trying to conform to western purity standards! we cannot resist zions oppression with people like you telling everyone what can and can't be praxis!!! people are going to have to face conasqences for what their countries do and this type of praxis has been done in the swana region for thousands of years!!!

What the fuck how do I even answer this? How are tankies this wrong about humans?

Chat, is it imperialism to think rape is bad?

[thedandelionresistance]

What is a revolution?

I've seen so many people think of a revolution as a bloody, violent thing. Taking a better society, wresting power from the hands of the powerful with force. Eliminating societal undesirables as the unspoken bonus goal: the disabled who rely on medical supply lines, the homeless who rely on community and state support initiatives, the children already caught in the crossfire of their parents' ownership and the state's enforcement of it.

I've seen fellow leftists - socialists, anarchists - reject the concept of revolution for that reason, and I'm right there with them... except the word revolution is still meaningful to us.

So... what is a revolution?

Is blood the only fuel, or can we find a clean energy source? Can it be so unlike YA revenge fantasies and instead be a tsunami of overwhelming compassion and community? Can it be gradual, ongoing, not a Rapture nor a cleansing but simply a process day by day? Can it be a living thing, breathing with the collective oxygen and dreams of a whole world?

What if a revolution is all the small things? Asking your disabled neighbor what form of help would be most helpful to them and doing what you can. Making (food-restriction-safe) food for people who can eat it. Sharing resources and building social programs that'll catch the vulnerable as the rot in the state condemns it. Sharing freely and fearlessly and not blaming others for the way they cope with a world that is still often cruel when they aren't hurting anyone else. Taking according to your need and giving according to your ability, including with how you take action to take care of others.

rev·o·lu·tion·ar·y

adjective

1. involving or causing a complete or dramatic change.

Things never truly change when power is seized and hierarchies redistributed. Every "revolution" of blood and death fails at its fundamental intent.

But what, then, could be more revolutionary than one step at a time, making the world a little brighter? Call me naïve, call me idealistic, but those who cannot even imagine a better future largely can't make one. (If you can't imagine it because of despair though, let us do that work for you, and we'll bring you with us for as long as you'll come.)

What could cause a more complete change than simply changing how each of us treat other people, bit by bit? What could be a more dramatic change than merely building a home and a hearth, brick by brick?

What could make things better more than never stopping trying to make things better? (Not doing everything right all the time, but just pushing to do as much as you can, whatever that means in any given moment, and forgiving yourself your own flaws and mistakes.)

Our revolution is life lived, not checkbox checked. It lives, it breathes, it feels, it laughs, it cries, it grows. Most of all, it seeks out a thousand thousand other small revolutions and builds communities of change.

That is revolution.

[drdemonprince]

I've noticed a pattern in anticapitalist books I read (specifically I'm talking abt Mark Fisher here, in Capitalist Realism). They do this great anticapitalist analysis etc and then go on to critique their students? and sometimes it's a bit ableist? it's like all the critical thought goes out of the window and they cannot understand the situation because for once suddenly they are in the authoritative position. It always gives me this "I don't understand these kids, back in my day-" vibe, and I see this with lecturers at university too. like Mark Fisher maybe we can think outside the box about your student who "needs" headphones to focus in class "even though no music is playing". and maybe it's not to do with the "Matrix"(????) I'm well aware this was written in 2008 but it's weird that I see this pattern continue today. Not to mention Mark Fisher took part in some ableist studies, and was a guy with questionable intentions on occasion.

it's like you Just said that reducing labour is good why are you calling your students lazy, that's so unprofessional and privileged. I wonder of coincidence that he is anti-meds when his right wing, pro-eugenics, accelerationist friend was addicted to amphetamines.

Or even just the amount of people who have written books about laziness and anticapitalism (excluding you) and just saying the most contradictory shit ever?? or not following their own ideology???

Anyway, I wonder if, when writing Laziness Does Not Exist, you came across any of this and were equally as baffled.

Materialism is just *so* true that high-status academics don't have a vested class interest in seeing their student struggles as legitimate or in recognizing the struggles of disabled people in general. For many edgy academic leftists having the correct opinions is just a way to flex one's intellectual status, not a lived experience they give a shit about. I'm not shitting Fisher in particular in saying this, it's more that it's a really widespread problem in the culture of these kinds of (very white, very academic, very cishet) leftists communities. You see the same kind of thing among some of the Chapo stan types, too, you don't have to be specifically an academic to do it -- lots of people throwing around the r-slur and flexing on how much they have read and doing fuck all for the oppressed people around them. I tend to find it especially common among people who inherited leftism from their (often academic) parents? Whereas leftist communities populated by Black & brown anarchists and working class people tend to fare a lot better in this particular respect.

Note that I'm not saying a person's identities are a guarantee of them being any more radical -- there's lots of liberals lurking in our midsts of all identities for instance -- more that someone's orientation toward power tells you a lot. and unfortunately there is an approach to leftism that puts a lot of stock in either institutional power via the academy, or in a kind of soft power of intellectual authoritativeness that tends to punish anyone who is supposedly less well read, less intelligent, lazy, needs disability accommodations, has trauma triggers, or what have you.

The simple answer is that power and privilege obscures other people's challenges from you, and the desire to preserve one's power (be it actually institutional academic authority or just the status of the person who supposedly knows the most in the room) leads to a lot of oppressive behavior. a lot of these guys that you're talking about believe in communism sincerely but they don't have humility, they believe themselves to be superior to most everyone else. and they tend to be white guys from wealthy families who either do not have any disabilities of their own, or they have the undiagnosed intj mastermind rational flavor of autism that makes you feel incredibly alienated from others but interpret that alienation as a sign of your intellectual superiority. (i had this type but i got better. a little)

[bigger-rat]

online leftism really rots your brain in a very specific way and makes you think that everyone that agrees with most of your opinions must be the exact sort of person that you'd support. but if you go outside you'll learn that people are generally insane and self-contradictory

[centrally-unplanned]

Hello. Our discussion the other day left me confused about what exactly you consider the term "Leftism" to mean. So as a clarifying example, would you describe the USA Democrats as a "Leftist" party? Thanks

Starting at the direct level, the democrats in the US contains leftists but is not wholly or primarily leftists. Its dumb US stuff, since its a harshly two-party system both republicans and democrats are actually a grab bag of coalitions. At different times the democrats are either cooperating with or opposing their own leftist faction, so its contextual.

I don't find this framing too useful in the modern era honestly. Like yes, Hegel was *sigh, ugggh* right, human preferences are diverse but aggregated social dynamics work such that a 'left-right' binary emerges in almost all socieites. However, its not what self-identified capital-L leftists tend to mean, they treat Leftism as a cohesive, cross-country faction distinct from conservatives, liberals, etc. This made sense at the end of the 19th century - opposition to imperialism, support for expanded franchise, legalizing unions, etc, made a unified political platform in Europe. But political faction aren't a constant, its downstream of the political, social, and economic forces of the day.

These days I don't see a strong "leftist" political party in the same way of much note. On some topics is because its too diffuse - oh leftists support queer rights? So do most liberals, so do a lot of conservatives even, progress on queer rights wasn't wholly or even primarily a leftist achievement depending on the country. On others its because its way too specific - are the german environmentalists shutting down nuclear power plants to prop up coal plants leftists? They think they are, to me they are fools. For an issue near and dear to me, left-NIMBYs think they are preserving their communities, I think they are gatekeeping low income housing and degrading our cities. Are the leftist for queer rights also NIMBYs? What do they think of open borders? There isn't a coherent platform of leftism even within countries, let alone across them.

(A lot of this is because the goals of 19th century leftism were achieved in many fronts, though certainly not all - expanded franchise, end of imperialism, large welfare states, etc. Those solutions ofc brought ther own problems and history marched on)

Instead I view modern capital-L leftism as primarily a cultural thing - lots of Against Capitalism energy, but when you are in office debating budget allocations between transport modalities or immigration regulations suddenly that energy provides contradictory answers. It does exist, im not saying its all vibes; instead when analysing the political party of country X, its not a simple question. The Democratic party in America has its left moments and it has its liberal moments and its straight-up right moments; the Socialist Party of France has had gone back and forth on what that actually means because it turns out governing is hard, and has done a ton of conservative stuff in its day.

I suppose it is worth mentioning that for some forms of leftism it *is* all vibes - no actual plan for obtaining and utilizing political power, just vague hand-waves at ~revolution~ that is never going to happen and would probably be a disaster if it did. This isn't the majority by any stretch, its often an insult hurled at actual leftists who absolutely are doing real work. But they do exist - they aren't political figures at all, and I don't consider them worthy of discussion; they can continue writing their mislabelled fiction. (The right, of course, has this faction too) So i don't factor these people into an analysis of capital-L Leftism any more than I have to.

[catinafigtree]

I think that the reason that some Muslims see leftism and feminism as contradictory to Islam is because they see it as a means to political power and not as a religion

[thebleeding-heart]

I have to laugh when people who live in cities tell me it’s too hard to go vegan. You think I live within an hour’s drive of a Whole Foods? A Trader Joe’s perhaps? A place with vegan takeout that isn’t just the one tofu dish from the local Chinese restaurant? I don’t. But I make do with what I have because the alternative is murder.

I know many people struggle trying to go vegan for various reasons, since we are all in such different circumstances, and I respect the struggle. I won’t say going vegan is easy, because many times it’s not. We’re just asking you to care. To take some time out of your life to do the research and align your actions with your beliefs as much as possible. Just give an honest effort. It’s all any vegans are asking you to do. Complaining online about how you (or more often, others) “can’t go vegan” (meaning you aren’t even aware of the definition) isn’t activism. And if for some reason you must eat meat to survive, why in the goddamn hell would you scream at vegans for asking others not to? If you gave a shit about animals you would advocate for the same.

Changing our consumer habits certainly won’t destroy capitalism. It won’t even really dent it. But why wouldn’t we at least make an attempt to reduce the harm we cause? Eating dead bodies every day is one of the most obvious manifestations of violence to normalize. How will we ever free ourselves when our entire culture normalizes slaughtering others and using them as commodities because they are different from us? How can we destroy all oppression when the very basis of oppression dominates our everyday lives?

[headlessmind]

the other day i was talking to my singing teacher about politics and she was like "oh wow you've really moved to the left a lot" and i had this realization that the pandabear made me forget how to hide my political opinions in front of others..............

[whitehotharlots]

There are other ways to understand stuff

As I’ve mentioned before, I am ambivalent toward vaccine mandates. Like most other aspects of our disastrous response to COVID, mandates could, in theory, serve to stop the spread of the disease and save lives. But in practice, like every other aspect of our response, they are all but guaranteed to be enforced in a selective and half-assed manner that will have little to no positive public health outcomes but will instead further empower some of the worst human beings on earth while further ensuring that the masses continue to understand the world and themselves primarily according to how they despise the other side. But even if I was firmly in favor of mandates, I like to think I could recognize that some people would have trepidations, and that having these trepidations did not necessarily make these people hateful idiots who deserve to be punished. One need not believe that Bill Gates is injecting us with microchips in order to have misgivings toward Pfzier, after all. A healthy skepticism of the for-profit medical industry was practically a bedrock of American leftism until, like, 10 months ago. Surely this means we should be uniquely capable of understanding the reservations of others, that we could attempt to persuade them over without resorting to mockery, recrimination, or outright hatred...

Ugg. Ugg ugg ugg. 

Perversely, I can’t help but imagine how this all would have played out if Trump won the 2020 election. It’s feasible, if not probable, to think that the roles would be 100%, seamlessly reversed, with Dems criticizing the naivety of the MAGA rubes who allow themselves to be jabbed with poison just so they can validate the egomania of their leader. After all, our august Vice President straight-up admitted that she��d be very distrustful of any vaccine that was made available while the Bad Orange Man was still president. Her supporters would likely have listened to the wisdom of this Fierce Kween and followed suit. 

If we’ve learned nothing else from this pandemic--and we haven’t--it’s that Americans are incapable of understanding any issue outside the lens of partisan politics. There’s nothing beyond R’s and D’s. I cannot fathom a more self-destructive approach to public health messaging than to frame it as partisan political issue, but such was inevitable; we simply lack to ability to communicate in any other manner.

Now, I know the response you’re already starting to type out. I’ve smoked weed and I’ve taken Philosophy 101. The personal is political. There’s no such thing as a non-ideological belief. Every statement imbricates, reifies, and--uhh--deconstructs hundreds of basal assumptions that only the deepest of graduate students are capable of articulating. That’s some Big Brain shit, and you should be proud of yourself for thinking it.

But please note I referred not to ideology but partisanship, and the latter concept is significantly dumber than the former. If anything, our insistence of politicizing all aspects of our comprehension has rendered us even more incapable of recognizing or interrogating our ideological biases. Partisanship is a team sport. It’s not coherent. It’s very frequently contradictory. And it’s the only means we allow ourselves to understand any aspect of our wretched, collapsing society. 

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Fear of Conflict

“Truly it is not a failing in you that you stiffen yourself against me and  assert your distinctness or peculiarity: you need not give way or renounce yourself” — Max Stirner

Whenever more than a few anarchists get together, there are arguments. This is no surprise, since the word “anarchist” is used to describe a broad range of often contradictory ideas and practices. The only common denominator is the desire to be rid of authority, and anarchists do not even agree on what authority is, let alone the question of what methods are appropriate for eliminating it. These questions raise many others, and so arguments are inevitable.

The arguments do not bother me. What bothers me is the focus on trying to come to an agreement. It is assumed that “because we are all anarchists”, we must all really want the same thing; our apparent conflicts must merely be misunderstandings which we can talk out, finding a common ground. When someone refuses to talk things out and insists on maintaining their distinctness, they are considered dogmatic. This insistence on finding a common ground may be one of the most significant sources of the endless dialogue that so frequently takes place of acting to create our lives on our own terms. This attempt to find a common ground involves a denial very real conflicts.

One strategy frequently used to deny conflict is to claim that an argument is merely a disagreement over words and their meanings. As if the words one uses and how one chooses to use them have no connection to one’s ideas, dreams and desires. I am convinced that there are very few arguments that are merely about words and their meanings. These few could be easily resolved if the individuals involved would clearly and precisely explain what they mean. When individuals cannot even come to an agreement about what words to use and how to use them, it indicates that their dreams, desires and ways of thinking are so far apart that even within a single language, they cannot find a common tongue. The attempt to reduce such an immense chasm to mere semantics is an attempt to deny a very real conflict and the singularity of the individuals involved.

The denial of conflict and of the singularity of individuals may reflect a fetish for unity that stems from residual leftism or collectivism. Unity has always been highly valued by the left. Since most anarchists, despite their attempts to separate themselves from the left, are merely anti-state leftists, they are convinced that only a united front can destroy this society which perpetually forces us into unities not of our choosing, and that we must, therefore, overcome our differences and join together to support the “common cause”. But when we give ourselves to the “common cause”, we are forced to accept the lowest common denominator of understanding and struggle. The unities that are created in this way are false unities which thrive only by suppressing the unique desires and passions of the individuals involved, transforming them into a mass. Such unities are no different from the forming of labor that keeps a factory functioning or the unity of social consensus which keeps the authorities in power and people in line. Mass unity, because it is based on the reduction of the individual to a unit in a generality, can never be a basis for the destruction of authority, only for its support in one form or another.  Since we want to destroy authority, we must start from a different basis.

For me, that basis is myself — my life with all of its passions and dreams, its desires, projects and encounters. From this basis, I make “common cause” with no one, but may frequently encounter individuals with whom I have an affinity. It may well be that your desires and passions, your dreams and projects coincide with mine. Accompanied by an insistence upon realizing these in opposition to every form of authority, such affinity is a basis for a genuine unity between singular, insurgent individuals which lasts only as long as these individuals desire.  Certainly, the desire for the destruction of authority and society can move us to strive for an insurrectional unity that becomes large-scale, but never as a mass movement; instead it would need to be a coinciding of affinities between individuals who insist on making their lives their own.  This sort of insurrection cannot come about through a reduction of our ideas to a lowest common denominator with which everyone can agree, but only through the recognition of the singularity of each individual, a recognition which embraces the actual conflicts that exist between individuals, regardless of how ferocious they may be, as part of the amazing wealth of interactions that the world has to offer us once we rid ourselves of the social system which has stolen our lives and our interactions from us.

[mariaiscrafting]

I’ve finally realized why I like Internet Ruined Me the most out of the E-Girl Trilogy. It’s because this song is the one that seems the least satirical and the most genuine, and that genuineness makes it the most heart-wrenching.

Let me explain.

As most of us can probably tell, the E-Girl Trilogy is supposed to mostly serve as a satire of various stereotypes Internet guys in their 20s nowadays can oftentimes fit into- that is to say, incel or incel-like behavior, casual misogyny, lacking in social skills, befriending women only for romantic/sexual benefits, unacceptance of any self-blame, arrogance, etc. However, despite the many things that have led us to that conclusion of satire- 

Wilbur’s own explanation of his songs, his derisive attitude towards people who can relate to certain lines or verses, the word choice when describing the stereotypes in these songs -I always figured some part of the songs were genuine. Maybe Wilbur’s writing about the kind of man he used to be. Maybe he’s taking true emotions or stories that influenced YCGMA/MIWB; given some of the thematic similarities across the albums/collections, I wouldn’t doubt it. 

But out of the E-Girl trio, Internet strikes me as the one with the greatest degree of that genuineness. The melancholy isn’t just a characteristic of the narrator that the song plays with, via rhythm and word choice. Wilbur doesn’t sound like he’s actually making fun of most of the things he says in this song. There are a couple lines where Wilbur, the creator himself, makes fun of the narrator, as exhibited in the wording and delivery of “I know you want 6′4″ but one foot more and I’ll almost be tall enough,” and of, “sexual enough, but not enough to scare me.” But for most of the song, the character/narrator simply relays his thoughts, and where there is any derision, it sounds more like self-loathing than Wilbur, the creator, deriding the character. It’s so different from the jovial tone of Your New Boyfriend, or the structure and sarcastic tone of I’m in Love With an E-Girl. When Internet’s narrator makes fun of himself, it’s not really making fun; it’s just... sad.

I guess what I mean is that Internet feels more introspective than the other two songs because this isn’t a guy hating on another guy; it sounds like a guy who just hates himself. Maybe that’s why this song makes me want to sink into the nearest cushion, close my eyes, and clear my mind whenever I hear it. As someone well-acquainted with self-loathing, this entire song makes so much sense to me. Not in the sense that you might think; I don’t relate to the misogyny or particular brand of depression inherent to men my age who are disillusioned by life and feel aimless (oftentimes leading to radicalization, whether that be into leftism, the alt-right, taking the red pill, etc), 

What I can relate so much to, is the judgement of one’s self in such a negative light, and then stating those judgements as if they were merely neutral observations. This kind of person knows every single destructive behavior they partake in and every single addiction they have that makes them a useless member of society; they don’t have enough will to change or get rid of them, but they do have enough mental energy to detest themselves so deeply for them that the statement “I fucking suck” seems as neutral a fact as “the sky is blue.” This kind of person wants desperately for the person or people they’ve attached themselves to to care about them, or show them any ounce of attention, so they go to invasive, destructive lengths to get that attention. They know what they’re doing and thinking is insane, and they know they’re a threat to their self and to others because of the destructiveness of their actions. This kind of person sometimes flips into arrogance out of self-preservation, which seems contradictory to the self-loathing, but is just a natural product of the self-aggrandization of one’s own thoughts to such an extent that you think everything you think is fact.

It’s a kind of miserable I get, and every time this song has looped while writing this, I’ve gotten one step closer to realizing the meaning behind every single word in this song. I used to think it was just another satire, another caricature of the kind of sad, almost-incel most people make fun of now. But, no. This song is so much more than that...

[sluttynurse]

ok i promised myself this twitter rant under the cut

i fucking hate the misogyny on there among leftists or are they even really leftists. a bunch of blackpilled computer guys who think the height of comedy is saying based and cringe and making fun of women on tiktok. i fucking hate whoever thought that we needed to appeal to the working class by being more racist and sexist and homophobic like. isn't that kind of derogatory. the fuckers from stupidpol and these corners on twitter just get obsessed with proving how fucking smart they are and how much theory they read that they have no problem letting anyone who knows who deleuze is into their circles even fascists who want free healthcare somehow, contradictory. like i fucking hate the horseshoe theory but on one side there's the right wing that hates liberals and the left wing stupidpol shitheads who use the opportunity to be sexist and racist etc. but the misogyny is particularly awful somehow i've mentioned it before that they're kind of stuck in the past with how they make fun of feminists like they STILL bring up pussy hats even though most feminists i know wouldn't be caught dead wearing one. idk how many times i have to see some white guy with a beard and an anime icon who thinks he's the pinnacle of leftism bc he worked in a factory and voted for trump say that all women are holes- oops i mean liberal white women. the pickme culture and fatshaming is a whole different story but just thinking about those guys making fun of that tiktok girl who was autistic and saying she was only pretending for attention makes me sick to my fucking stomach. and of course there's the factor that theyre feeling bernout (get it) and it's quarantine but I have a feeling it's been going on for a fucking long time and I'm extremely sick of it. and i fucking hate the cloak around it calling it irony or whatever. and i hate the closemindedness when it comes to media consumption. i hate it all.

[native-to-entropy]

Another component here is that single-use items are not necessarily contradictory to a fully circular material economy. Currently, most plastics are petrochemically derived, but we know how to make bioplastics, and there's ongoing research to improve them! We can imagine a sustainable, technological world in which disabled people can thrive.

Also... anyone being ableist-veiled-in-misunderstood-leftism about prepared meals and straws of all things, genuinely does not understand the harms caused by *everything else* in modern industrialized society. Do you live in a building that depends on design, environment, and renewables for all heating and cooling? And own absolutely nothing made by underpaid laborers? Probably not, so don't shit on disabled people just trying to eat their lunch. We can continue improving the sustainability of our society as a whole without shaming individuals for taking the only option available to them.

Some people don’t want to hear this but sometimes accessibility is not sustainable or eco-friendly. Disabled people sometimes need straws, or pre-made meals in plastic containers, or single-use items. Just because you can work with your foods in their least processed and packaged form doesn’t mean everyone else can.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

hawtdawgblog replied to your post “I know this question may seem irrelevant due to the current situation,...”

If the Liberals are centrists or even moderate right wing or barely left leaning at all, then why are they called the Liberals? Sounds kinda contradictory to me :/

Because this isn’t the USA where Liberal is a euphenism for leftism (which isn’t even true in the USA as the Democrats would be a right wing party in every other country).

The Liberals have always straddled the centre, and recently have become more Centre Right.

The only major party left of Centre is the NDP (which makes sense because the NDP was formed from a merger of the Socialist CCF and the Canadian Labour Congress).

[drapeau-rouge]

Petty-bourgeois Revolutionism and Reformism

Originally appeared in Communist Viewpoint, May-June 1970. By Don Currie.

Fundamentally, petty-bourgeois theories of "reform and revolution" objectively serve capitalism. The petty bourgeoisie as a middle class is undergoing rapid destruction in the advanced capitalist countries. Under the hammer blows of monopoly it vacillates between the monopoly bourgoiesie and the working class—hence its ideology is vacillating, contradictory, inconsistent and unscientific. The working class and the Communist Party always seek the support of the non-working-class strata of the population in the struggle against the common enemy, monopoly.

At a time of rising mass movements in which the working class is beginning to assert its leading role, the ruling classes in the advanced capitalist countries require a variety of forms and forces to fight scientific socialism and the Communist movement. Petty-bourgeois theories penetrate the working-class movement disguised as neo-Marxism and perform a service to the monopoly bourgeoisie by engaging and oppoinsg Marxism-Leninism. The proponents of anti-communism consciously utilize and manipulate these trends since they all espouse anti-Sovietism. Herein lies the great value of the petty-bourgeois "revolutionary and reformist" ideologists to the monopoly bourgeoisie.

The opportunism of the petty-bourgeois ideologists lies in their worship of spontaneity, contempt and fear of the working class. At best they indulge in a superficial critique of capitalism, but do not seek to change it fundamentally through struggle to transfer political power to the working class and its allies—the dictatorship of the proletariat. They strive to stand between the working class and the monopoly bourgeoisie. The effect of petty-bourgeois ideology within the working-class movement is to maintain the working class as an appendance of the bourgeois parties and to divert the working class from the Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties.

The proponents of petty-bourgeois theories of "reform and revolution" are becoming more active and are assuming new forms. There has been a coalescence, an interpenetration and identity of views between revisionist trends, various forms of petty-bourgeois revolutionism and petty-bourgeois reformism in Canada.

On the face of it these anti-Marxist trends appear to have differences. These differences, however, are not on fundamentals. On fundamnetal questions of bourgeois ideology there is agreement.

On what basic questions is there agreement among petty-bourgeois revolutionists, reformists and revisionists? First of all, tehre is the rejection of the fundamental question of Marxism-Leninism, i.e., the dictatorship of the proletariat and the leading role of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard party. They all counterpose leninism to Marxism and deny that Leninism is Marxism in the era of the world-wide transition from capitalist to socialism, in the era of the socailist revolution and the building of socialism.

In the July 1969 issue of Canadian Dimension, Professor Eugene Genovese, Professor of History at Sir George Williams University in Montreal, declared, "Leninism, a brilliant success in underdeveloped countries, has been a dismal half-century failure throughout the advanced capitalist world . . . the American left must find a third way or forever wander about in despair and impotence."

The "third" anti-Leninist way is being diligently sought after by the petty-bourgeois ideologists. What this "third way" should be was offered by Herbert Marcuse, the oracle of the "New Left" and darling of the CIA. Marcuse's system of views is a non-class, anti-Marxist view. Marcuse asserts that there are no exploited classes, only "repressed" majorities. He calls upon this "repressed" majority to "carry out a radical change, revolution in and against highly developed technically advanced society." This call for revolution is without distinction equally applied to socialist as well as to capitalist countries. Marcuse is rabidly anti-Soviet and advocates "libertarian socialism." Marcuse blandly dismisses the working class as the motive force for revolutionary change, declaring that "it is to a great extent integrated into the system." According to eMarcuse the motive force for "radical change" is the amorphous "repressed majority" led by the "New Left." The need for a Communist Party is declared by Marcuse to be outmoded. "What we can envisage is not this large centralized and coordinated movement but local and regional political action against specific grievances—which will depend on political guidance and direction by militant leading minorities."

This elitist, profoundly reactionary theory is popularly known by the pseudonym "New Left." It is the ideology of the petty-bourgeois reformists and assorted self-styled revolutonaries who attempt to lead these movements in the direction of deaf and accomodation to capitalism. (It is not to be confused with the mass movements that are arising in capitalist coutnries directed against monopoly rule.)

The "New Left" is not new and it is not left. It is a variety of petty-bourgeois ideology in the period of sharpening class battles in the advanced capitalist countries. It arises objectively as a result of the continuing destruction of the petty bourgeoisie. It is the world outlook of a doomed class—hence it is despairing, anarchist, adventurous and inconsistent.

Prior to the anti-monopoly movements in the advanced capitalist countries, especially in the U.S.A., assuming the mass character they have now reached, petty-bourgeois reformism and revolutionism was confined to the universities and to small sects in the labour movement. As the crisis within the advanced capitalist countrise deepens and socialism and Marxism-Leninism become a point of attraction for the masses, petty-bourgeois revolutionism leaves the confines of the universities and attempts to penetrate the labour movement. It seeks to lead the working class away from struggle into opportunist and adventurous dead ends.

The defeat of the sally of imperialism in Czechoslovakia was a powerful setback to petty-bourgeois revolutionism everywhere in teh world. It was in Czechoslovakia where all of these tendencies emerged as united anti-socialist force, encouraged, aided and abetted by imperialism in a vain attempt to resurrect bourgeois democracy. It is interesting to note in passing that large numbers of the more prominent "New Left" leaders from North American "happened" to be in Czechoslovakia coincidentally within the August 1968 events.

Among these was James Harding, Canadian "New Leftist" who was interviewed in the student-radical journal New Generation of  which he is an associated editor. Harding said that the Czech "reformers" aimed at three goals: 1. Special status for the Slovak people; 2. Abolition of the centralized power of the Communist Party to be replaced by a socialist pluralism and 3. Adoption of a Yugoslav type economy. "I strongly favor the first two," Harding declared.

Harding's gratuitous support for the Czech "reformers" reflected the position of the main tendency within the "New Left" movement at the time. In essence it threw its support behind anti-Sovietism, anti-communism, bourgeois nationalism and reaction all down the line and was diametrically opposed to the fundamental interests of the Czechoslovak people.

Gustav Husak in the January 1970 issue of World Marxist Review replied to all such "friends" of Czechoslovakia and their theories of a "reformed" socialism:

"It is to Lenin's credit that he smashed the theories of spontaneity advocated by all kinds of opportunists who held forth about capitalist automatically growing into socialism. Lenin substantiated the need for the Communist Party actively to influence the historical process. Our Czechoslovak experience corroborated the soundness of Lenin'st eachings on the need for a new kind of revolutionary party, the vehicle for revolutionary class consciousness, for a party that will be the leading political force in socialism and the organizer of the masses."

The identify of views between revisionism and "New Leftism" is borne out by Gustav Husak's description of the attitude of the Right tendency in the leadership of the party:

"The former party leadership, or ratehr its Right-opportunist-minded section, made no effort to show that Leninism as a class doctrine makes a distinction between capitalist society and socialist society, that there can be no return to the model of bourgeois democvracy because socialism is based on public ownership of the means of production, that its class and social structure differ from the class structure of any capitalist state . . . In capitalist society power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie and is used against the exploited. In socialist society, on the contrary, all power is in the hands of the working people, headed by the working class."

". . . That is why our party cannot and will not unite on the basis of an accentuated national exclusiveness, that is, nationalism; cannot and will not unite on the basis of anti-Sovietism. On the contrary, the only correct Marxist-Leninist way to unity of our party is unification based on the scientific world outlook of the working class, building a mature socialist society in our country based on proletarian internationalism and socialist patriotism, on the principles of close cooperation and friendship with the Soviet Union and other socialist states and with the international Communist and working-class movement."

This is the answer of the whole international Communist movement to the attempt of the imperialist forces, in collusion with and with the active assistance of the petty-bourgeois reformist forces to mount an attack on socialism from within.

Petty-bourgeois reformism and organized labour

The setback of the petty-bourgeois theories of "democratization of socialism," "libertarian socialism," "the students as the new revolutionary vanguard" has compelled further refining of petty-bourgeois revolutionary theories. The Guardian, U.S. petty-bourgeois radical-paper, sees strength in the basic weakness of "New Leftism" in its rejection of Marxism-Leninism. The Guardian declared, "The great strength of the New Left has come from its ability to change course when the demands of the political struggle indicate change."

The petty-bourgeois radicals in Canada are trying to turn their recent defeats in victory by centring more attention of the organized labour movement. This is a more dangerous tendency since the leadership of this trend in Canada is spearheaded by a group of petty-bourgeois reformist intellectuals who hold prominent positions in the New Democratic Party.

The emergence of the petty-bourgeois reformist group at the last convention of the NDP has been hailed in the bourgeois press as the emergence of a new socialist party.

Marxists do base their assessment of political movements on what these movements say about themselves and much less on what the capitalist press says about them. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada greeted the emergence of the "Manifesto" of the group. It is a reflection of the growth of militancy in the trade unions which is finding reflection in the NDP. This development takes place on the background of the growing rank-and-file criticism of the policy of the right-wing social-democratic leadership of the trade union movement which has pursued a cold-war class-collaborationist course within the unions throughout the entire post-war period. This old encrusted leadership rose to power during the advent of the cold war and aided and abetted the anti-Communist campaigns within the unions. Today more and more Canadian unions are wiping out anti-Communist clauses in union rules and demanding militant bargaining, more political action to defend the right to strike, picket and organize, and counter the state-monopoly drive to impose an incomes policy on the working class with a program expressing the interests of the working people.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Canada statement wanred that the manifest of the Watkins group evades "the central question of genuine socialist policy," the attitude to the state and working-class power, the leading role of the working class in bringing about social change, the overriding necessity of working-class and trade union unity and unity of the left in the struggle to achieve it. "Needless to say the struggle for genuine socialist policies cannot succeed around anti-Communist banners," the Central Committee declared.

The group, known as the Watkins group after its best-known spokesman, Melville Watkins, declares in its manifesto: "A central objective of Canadian socialism must be to further the democratization process in industry. The Canadian trade union movement throughout its history has waged a democratic battle against so-called rights and prerogatives of ownership and management. It has achieved the important moral and legal victory of providing the working men an effective say in what their wages will be."

The implication of the statement is that the exploitation of the working class has ceased except for its exclusion from having a say over the introduction of technological change. If this were achieved, the working class would have competed the struggle for socialism. "What is needed," claims Anthony Carew, research director for a large Canadian rail union, a Watkins supporter and advocate of "industrial democracy," "is a system of industrial democracy which will parallel our political democracy." Ed Broadbent, NDP Memebr of Parliament, goes further and claims such a reform would mean the winning of socialism. Broadbent claims, "A socialist society is one in which there is direct or indirect democratic control in all institutions which have a major effect on a man's life . . ."

The petty-bourgeois reformist theory of industrial democracy, also referred to as "workers' control," is an attempt to deny the objective nature of the class struggle, the necessity of overthrowing capitalism and the establishing of socialism. It is a wholly reformist view of the road to socialism. It is the reflection of the propaganda of the monopoly bourgeoisie that modern capitalism has done away with classes and class struggle and has overcome the fundamental contradction between social production and private appropriation. The fact that petty-bourgeois reformist leaders of the trade union movement peddle this view doesn't make it any less reactionary and wrong.

One of the authors of the manifesto, Charles Taylor, vice-president of the NDP, outlines a theory of classes in no way dissimilar to that of Marcuse except for the jargon used. In contrast to Marcuse's assertion that the working class has been "integrated into the bourgeoisie," Taylor asserts that the big line of division in society is "between the majority who participate in the affluent society and the one-quarter of the population who live in or below the poverty line." The effect of the attempt by the reformists to divert the attention of the trade union movement to the fight for "industrial democracy" is many-sided and full of pitfalls for the working class.

To raise the slogan of "industrial democracy" at a time of intensification of the attack by monopoly on the living standards of the working class detracts and weakens the wage movement.

The reformist claim that to direct the trade union movement to teh struggle for "worker control" now is a revolutionary proposal and will by itself lead to the rise of socialist consciousness is a denial of the srength and need for the scientific theory of Marxism-Leninism to triumph among the most advanced sections of the working class and of the need for the Communist Party guided by scientific socialism to lead the struggle for socialism. Socialism cannot arise automatically from the struggles by the trade unions for reforms. Socialism can only be achieved by a revolutionary struggle for power which transfers political power from the capitalis class to the working class.

A telling criticism of these petty-bourgeois reformist theories was given by Gus Hall, general secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.A., to their 19th convention and deserves wide discussion among trade unionists. Comrade Hall said: "Now we should be clear that we are for higher economic demands. We are for taking away the prerogatives the bosses should never have had to begin with.

"But we must ask: What is the effect of demands in the area of what is called control off the process of production when the question of ownership of industry is not on the order of the day? When demands for workers' control are related to questions of change of ownership of industry from private to public, there are no problems. Now some will say 'If that is the problem, why not throw in the idea of take-over?' But that of course is nonsense unless the objective conditions are ripe for it. The idea that simply demanding control will create the objective conditions is no less nonsense."

"Demands for control which are made when the objective conditions are not at the level for a take-over tend to turn into their opposite. They are demands for control over industries that will continue to be privately owned and will continue to operate for private profit. Under these conditions, they become demands for class partnership. They are based on the concept of labour and management operating the plant smoothly together. Even the struggle for such demands tends to create the partnership concept.

"Some ideologists on the 'New Left' have now raised the question fo the fight against management prerogvatives as being 'revolutionary' in nature, seeking to set this issue against other important demands of the workers, especially wage demands. Some even go to the extent of describing the struggle for higher wages as corrupting and exerting an anti-revolutionary influence on workers and the trade union movement.

"The Communist Party rejects such doctrines. Both the struggle for higher wages and the struggle against management prerogatives are struggles for reforms. Inherent in both struggles is the possibility of increasing the class consciousness and socialist consciousness of the working class, if Communist and other class-conscious wrokers are in tehse struggles and exert such influence."

It is the Communists that give the mass movements of the people a revolutionary orientation. It is Marxism-Leninism in action, the organized purposeful activity of the vanguard party that can join reforms to the struggle for socialism. Any description, analysis or policy that divorces the Communist Party from the working class, which fails to take into account the role the Marxist-Leninist party must play at every stage of the struggle lands in the camp of petty-bourgeois reformism or revolutionism.

The fact that many would-be revolutionaries advocate petty-bourgeois theories with the best of intentions only points up the challgenge to the Communists to win all those who are seeking a revolutionary alternative to the ideas of Marxism-Leninism.

"The big bourgeois is case-hardened; he knows that under capitalism a democratic republic, like every other form of state, is nothing but a machine for the suppression of the proletariat . . . The petty bourgeois, owing to his economic position and his conditions of life generally, is less able to appreciate this truth, and even cherishes the illusion that a democratic republic implies 'pure democracy,' 'a free people's state,' the non-class or super-class rule of the people, a pure manifestion of the will of the people, and so on and so forth." - V.I. Lenin