#socialist internationalism

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

On September 3, 1917, we had another "liberation day" of Riga. Riga was "liberated" by the Reichswehr, but a year later, in honor of this event, we received the "Wooden Fritz" monument, Latvia. Source: Kaspars Zellis

P.S. You can try to count how many times Riga was liberated in the 20th century by different invaders? We Latvians actually don't like foreign invaders! "Foreigners" always come with some bad shit here.... war, invasion, repressions and bad religions...multiculturalism attacks on Latvian language, culture, prosperity (well the Russian communist occupiers called it "socialist internationalism", an anti-indigenous hate ideology aimed at forcing the natives out of their homelands...and replacing local population with Russian migrants...) ..

Basically modern pseudo-liberal "multiculturalism" is an anti-indigenous hate ideology aimed at forcing the natives out of their home land...

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Six Trainloads of French Troops Are Held Up By Silesian Workmen,” Kingston Daily Standard. August 16, 1920. Page 1. ---- (Canadian Press Despatch) London, Aug. 16. - Workmen in upper Silesia regard France's recognition of General Wrangel as equivalent to a declaration war on Russia, and accordingly will refuse to recognize French representatives on the plebiscite commission, contending they are not neutral, says the Daily Mail’s Kattowitz correspondent.

Six trains of French troops from Teschen, the correspondent states, have been held up at Gliewitz, by workmen who feared they were going to help Poland. The French commander, he ads, then issued an ultimatum demanding a clear passage or he would use machine guns. The workmen are said to be armed.

The Belgian government has forbidden the shipment of ammunition which has arrived at Antwerp from France, destined for General Wrangel, according to an Antwerp despatch This action, it is believed, was due to the announcement by Belgian workmen that they would refuse to handle the shipment

[anarchotolkienist]

I must say that the main thing that has caused me to despair of the Left is that I have come to see the question of Fascism and of anti-Semitism increasingly seriously as time goes on, and to view them as some of the defining questions of history and of modernity. If you do that it becomes very clear how woefully inadequately these things are understood, and just how unimportant the broad Left views them as.

[workersolidarity]

💥Explosions Rock Stepanakert as Azerbaijan Launches an Offensive Against Armenia into the Disputed Nagorno-Karabakh Region 💥

Residents of Stepanakert in the heavily disputed Nagorno-Karabakh Region of what is internationally recognized as Azeri territory, awoke to sounds of explosions and gunfire ripping through the city Tuesday morning as Azeri Forces launched what it calls an Anti-Terrorist Operation into the region.

The Nagorno-Karabakh territory has been in dispute ever since the collapse of the Russian Empire after the October Revolution in 1917. The disputed territory was mostly de-escalated during the Soviet era, with Nagorno-Karabakh given the status of Autonomous Oblast within the Azerbaijan SSR, giving it a measure of self-governance.

However, since the collapse of the USSR, the ethnic dispute has flared back up with two major wars fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory since 1988.

The first Nagorno-Karabakh War lasted from February 1988 until May 1994. While the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020 lasted for 44 days.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been positioning himself to join the Western Bloc, taking an interest in joining the EU and NATO with US encouragement.

However, it is understood that NATO will not allow Armenia to join the Military Bloc as long as the risk of war breaking out in Nagorno-Karabakh remains high.

With this in mind, some analysts believe Armenia has been quietly instigating an Azeri incursion into the area with the idea of letting Nagorno-Karabakh fall completely under Azerbaijani control, relinquishing the territory and easing the associated tensions that might give NATO pause before admitting Armenia into the alliance.

Interestingly, Pashinyan accepted Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh back in May, undermining its own negotiating position and upsetting the balance of power in the region. However, the population of the Nagorno-Karabakh territory is majority Armenian, and local authorities do not recognize Azeri sovereignty over the area.

Azerbaijan has warned Armenia against involving itself with NATO, suggesting it will lead to conflict in the region, and few of Armenia's neighbors are happy with the moves. However, Armenia has ignored the warnings, going so far as to host US Forces in the country for Military exercises which began on September 11th, 2023.

Many Russian analysts, media personalities and politicians see this as a major provocation and an attempt to open a new front in the Ukraine War as Russian peacekeepers had been tasked with maintaining the Status-Quo as per agreement between the two warring sides at the end of the second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Western analysts dispute this claim.

We will keep you updated as information comes in.

UPDATE: sources say there have been 5 deaths and at least 80 casualties reported so far in the ongoing Azerbaijan Operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Lev Koufax and John Parker

The Popular Socialist Alliance Party (SPAP) is one of many organizations working in conjunction with the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate to organize the Global Conscience Convoy to the Rafah crossing to Gaza. It was founded in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, after the merger of several socialist organizations that faced repression under U.S.-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak.

[queen-mabs-revenge]

it really is the worst material-conditions ignorance on bald display.

here in ireland you heard this shit from liberals all the time re: the constitutional 8th amendment total abortion ban. "oh well people can travel to england if they need an abortion"

the people who can travel outside of the borders of a legal oppression are those who are able financially, physically, mentally, and social obligations-wise. in ireland that meant that pregnant people at the most dire intersections of capitalist oppression were denied abortion bodily autonomy. if you didn't have the money, couldn't take off work, couldn't leave behind people in your care or organizing and taking a trip was beyond your physical or mental remit, fuck you i guess?

liberals would often come back with a "we can fund charities that can help" rebuttal — thee most liberal of solutions because it does nothing to challenge the oppressive system, and also reinforces paternalistic ideas of agency conferred by their own philanthropic largesse. that thriving is something to be doled out by their organizations instead of something that should be owned and acted on by people themselves.

every time you leave systems of oppression unchallenged and tell people to make their own way to safety, you reify those systems as valid as you're leaving room for them to exist.

and people who benefit in some way from the structures of capitalism and class society that precipitate these violences will always be invested in doing just that. they might want to make sure that they aren't touched by those specific forms of structural violence (and preserving their wealth is a good way to do that), but truly challenging a capitalist system they benefit from will be always be a worse sin to them than its inherent violence.

that's where the liberal impulse to try these narratives of 'well just move — i'll even help!' comes from. they've got to get people to buy into a seemingly well-intentioned narrative in order to legitimize their methods of preserving class society.

people need to recognize this as a ruling class co-optation of genuine struggles for liberation, because as capitalism convulses in chaos around us, this is only going to get used more and more to try and fracture revolutionary solidarity and preserve the blood-soaked scaffolding that allows them to protect their own living standards.

and yes, history shows that they'll turn to fascism when the working class starts rattling that framework before they let it be dismantled from the goodness of their bleeding hearts.

The thing blue state leftists don’t seem to understand about red states is that telling minorities to “just leave” is really insidious. That is exactly what the republicans want. They want to make their state so miserable and dangerous and scary for everyone who isn’t a conservative cisgender heterosexual white Christian that those people leave. Leave behind their family, their homes, their friends, their jobs, their community, the places they’ve lived their entire life. With every person who leaves it is one less gay person teaching their children, one less person protesting outside the capitol, one less blue voter trying to stop the place they call home from sliding into fascism.

Many of us cannot afford to ‘just leave’ and many of us don’t want to because contrary to popular belief, North Carolina isn’t an irredeemable shithole with nothing to offer and no sense of community. People do leave red states for their safety but that does not fix the underlying problem, that doesn’t even make the problem better.

[tamamita]

how is isis different from hamas?

Gonna make it easy and comprehensible:

ISIS or DA'ISH is a transnational terror organization consisting of Iraqi Baathists, former Syrian rebels or moderates, recruited fighters from all over the world, former US captives in Iraq, and oppressed and disenfranchised Sunnis. Wahhabi in nature, ISIS subscribes to the literalist tradition of Islam, based on a strict adherence to Tawhid (Islamic monotheism), rejecting the concept of intercession and saint venerations, seeing them as an act of idolatry. Their religious verdicts are based on the literal interpretation of the Qur'an and Sunnah, rejecting metaphorical exegesis. They aim to establish a global caliphate, seeking to eliminate anyone who opposses it regardless of religious or ideological differences. They see their cause as a hastening of various Islamic end time prophecies in their interpretation of Islamic eschatology. Like many Salafis, they reject Taqlid, which is to conform to one of the four schools of thought in Sunni Islam. On top of that, they reject religious innovations (Bid'ah), which is the idea that anything introduced to the religion without any religious basis is heresy. Whether it be practical or theological, they deem any Muslim who engage in Bid'ah to be an apostate or heretic. They are notorious for their intolerance of non-Muslims and application of Takfirism (excommunication) on Muslims, whether Sunni or Shi'a. Christians had to pay the Jizya (poll tax) in their territories, while in other cases, they were murdered, expelled and had their churches destroyed or converted. They have no tolerance for Shi'a Muslims and will kill them on the spot (see: Speicher Massacre), and have often targeted them with IEDs or suicide bombers. Non-Muslims, like the Ezidis or Ahlul Haqq, were often subjected to execution whereas their women and children were either married away, converted or used as sex slaves. DAESH is not interested in national liberation, seeing it as a blasphemous innovation. DAESH does not consider Hamas to be Muslims due to struggle for national liberation which is supported by Iran and various Shi'i proxies.

Hamas is a political and military resistance group that consists of Palestinians. After the failures of the Oslo accord, Hamas broke away from PLO and formed their own political party. They either subscribe to the Shafi'i school of thought or some form of Ikhwani Salafism (Salafism as envisioned by the Muslim Brotherhood). They're a semi-governmental power in Gaza and are responsible for upholding the social and civil institutions, such as hospitals, schools and etc. Hamas' specific aim is localized and seeks to destroy the Zionist entity in order to form a one-state solution under an Islamic emirate or Islamic democracy. Their only enemy is Israel and any of its allies. As of the Hamas charter of 2017, they do not have an intolerance for non-Muslims or people of different religious and ideological comportments, as seen by them holding ties with both Shi'a and Socialist militias, such as Hezbollah and the PFLP/DFLP. Hamas is concerned with the national liberation of Palestine and the Palestinians. Being an entirely localized resistance group, they do not engage in global jihadism like ISIS nor do they carry out attacks internationally.

[mesetacadre]

What might decolonization in the US after a successful socialist revolution look like? Would there be one big government still? A sort of union of socialist republics? Something else entirely? Honestly I don't know how to ask.

Post-revolutionary decolonization (and realistically, the only kind of meaningful decolonization that is ever happening) in the US is a complicated matter given the relative success of the USAmerican genocidal project. The native population is 1.1% of the total population as of the 2020 census, this means that unlike in other, incomplete, settler projects such as the Sahrawi Republic or Palestine, it isn't feasible to restore the relation of the native population to the totality of the country. Regardless of population proportions though, the main focus of socialist decolonization is the struggle against any conflict between nationalities by removing the economic basis of that antagonism, which would then allow to also begin to remove the cultural elements that reinforced that dynamic of oppression. The focus is not to create more landlords but native, it's to remove the structure around private property in general, and make sure every worker, native or otherwise, receives as is needed. Taking into account the already relative dispossession of native people even before a pre-revolution context, there will have to be a great effort to bring the conditions of native people at the same level of non-native people.

Regarding the form of the new state, this will evidently depend on the form of the US state as the revolution happens. In other countries this would not be such a pressing question, but given the role and strength of the USAmerican bourgeoisie, it's not hard to believe that for any revolution to take place, the US state would need to be considerably weakened. Keeping this in mind, the strategy followed by all hitherto socialist revolutions is to not further fragment the new state. Given the complexity of navigating the construction of the first elements of a socialist economy, with the simultaneous effort needed for security, it would be both counterproductive and hypocritical to explicitly seek the independence of a portion of the population, as a part of the political program, it would be taking two steps forward and one step back. The communist revolution is national in form, because it happens within the structure of the capitalist state, but it is also international in content, because it explicitly repudiates the division of the proletariat along national lines.

We must understand that nationality, as much as it is relevant today and as much as it influences the course of history, is a byproduct of the development of capitalism, and that since it arose from the infrastructure to justify and protect it, it will also have to seize to exist and be replaced with proletarian internationalism for the duration of the transition to socialism-communism. Keeping this in mind, it would be hypocritical and regressive to, after taking control of the state and beginning the transition away from capitalism, to then turn around and divide the working class of the new country into even more national categories than they already are divided into.

The early USSR is a good comparison because of the sheer quantity of national diversity contained within the bounds of the corpse of the Tsarist Empire. The policy of the bolsheviks was neither of Russian supremacy or of immediate splintering into hundreds of nation states. Even during the very complicated and desperate context of the civil war, Finland was allowed its independence without much fuss from the CC, even if they were immediately incorporated into the German sphere via Von Mannerheim. When the 1936 constitution was being discussed, it was Stalin himself who went against the wishes of many bolsheviks to prevent the republics from gaining independence if they wished. No republics requested this however, because the oppressive mechanisms of capitalism and feudalism that had kept them under the Tsar's thumb for centuries had been replaced with an economic system that assured the equal development of all peoples within the USSR. The USSR itself was also not absolutely centralist, and the many constituent republics had varying degrees of autonomy, reflecting in some aspects the structure of democratic centralism.

I don't think the answer is to replicate the USSR, of course. The context and general state of things are very different, but there are lessons to be learnt from this successful, albeit flawed, tackling of the national question. Again though, we can't really speculate on the way that the US will look right before a revolution, and consequently the structures and problems a revolutionary government will have to start from.

[komsomolka]

The GDR’s record on internationalism was exemplary and it took the idea of solidarity with other, struggling nations seriously. Undoubtedly the internationalism demonstrated by German communists before the Second World War, in solidarity with the Soviet Union and particularly the role they played in Spain during the 1930s, also had some influence on its foreign policy. A number of ex-International Brigaders had leading positions in party and state.

Many of the struggles of colonial and former colonial countries for liberation and national independence received vital material and ideological support. The GDR sent doctors and other medical staff to the front line in Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola and other countries. It provided logistical support and training for SWAPO, the movement for independence in Namibia, as well as to the ANC in South Africa, printing Sechaba, its official newsletter for many years. Numerous foreign students from countries struggling to free themselves from the legacy of colonialism were given free training and education in the GDR itself. Refuge was also offered to those fleeing oppressive regimes; many Chileans in enforced exile from Pinochet’s fascist regime found asylum there, including its current president, Michelle Bachelet. [...]

Between 1964 and 1988, there were 60 friendship brigades made up of around 1,000 young people working in 26 countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In Algeria a brigade built houses for the homeless, in Mali they trained agricultural workers, in Nicaragua they built a training school for mechanics and, in 1980, a hospital financed in large part by donations made by GDR citizens. By September 1985, the Karl Marx Hospital, as it was named, had treated 10,000 patients, among them 3,000 children, and another 10,000 were supplied with medicines. The hospital is still working today, but now under the more innocuous name of ‘German-Nicaraguan Hospital’. In 2005 it celebrated its 25th anniversary. [...] A number of GDR schools were named after leading freedom fighters including a Nelson Mandela school in Ilmenau which was immediately renamed in 1989 because Mandela was then still deemed to be a terrorist by the West German government.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It by Bruni de la Motte & John Green with Seumas Milne (Contributor), 2015.

[fiercynn]

black & palestinian solidarities

if you support black liberation but are unsure of your stance on palestinian resistance, here’s a reminder that they are deeply intertwined. after the 1917 balfour declaration by the british government announcing the first support for a zionist state in palestine,  zionism and israeli occupation of palestine have followed similar ideologies and practices to white supremacist settler colonial projects, so solidarity between black and palestinian communities has grown over time, seeing each other as fellow anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles. (if you get a paywall for any of the sources below, try searching them in google scholar.)

palestinians have been inspired by and shown support for black liberationist struggles as early as the 1930s, when arabic-language newspapers in palestine wrote about the struggle by black folks in the united states and framed it as anti-colonial, as well as opposing the 1935 invasion by fascist italy of ethiopia, the only independent black african state at the time. palestinian support for black struggles grew in the 1960s with the emergence of newly-independent african states, the development of black and third world internationalisms, and the civil rights movement in the united states. palestinian writers have expressed this solidarity too: palestinian activist samih al-qasim showed his admiration for congolese independence leader patrice lumumba in a poem about him, while palestinian poet mahmoud darwish’s “letters to a negro” essays spoke directly to black folks in the united states about shared struggles.

afro-palestinians have a rich history of freedom fighting against israeli apartheid, where they face oppression at the intersections of their black and palestinian identities. some families trace their roots back hundreds of years, while others came to jerusalem in the nineteenth century from chad, sudan, nigeria, and senegal after performing the hajj (the islamic pilgrimage to mecca) and settled down. still others came to palestine in the 1940s specifically to join the arab liberation army, where they fought against israel’s ethnic cleansing of palestinians during the 1948 nakba (“catastrophe”). afro-palestinian freedom fighter fatima bernawi, who was of nigerian, palestinian, and jordanian descent, became, in 1967, the first palestinian woman to be organize an operation against israel, and subsequently the first palestinian woman to be imprisoned by israel. the history of afro-palestinian resistance continues today: even as the small afro-palestinian community in jerusalem is highly-surveilled, over-policed, disproportionately incarcerated, and subjected to racist violence, they continue to organize and fight for palestinian liberation.

black revolutionaries and leaders in the united states have supported the palestinian struggle for decades, with a ramp-up since the 1960s. malcolm x became a huge opponent of zionism after traveling to southwest asia and north africa (SWANA), publishing “zionist logic” in 1964, and becoming one of the first black leaders from the united states to meet with the newly formed palestine liberation organization. the black panther party and the third world women’s alliance, a revolutionary socialist organization for women of color, also supported palestinian resistance in the 1970s. writers like maya angelou, june jordan, and james baldwin have long spoken out for palestinians. dr. angela davis (who received support from palestinian political prisoners when she was incarcerated) has made black and palestinian solidarity a key piece of her work. and many, many more black leaders and revolutionaries in the united states have supported palestinian freedom.

while israel has long courted relationships with the african union and its members, there has been ongoing tension between them since at least the 1970s, when all but four african states (malawi, lesotho, swaziland, and mauritius) cut off diplomatic ties with israel after the 1973 october war. while many of those diplomatic relationships were reestablished in subsequent decades, they remain rocky, and earlier this year, the african union booted an israeli diplomat from their annual summit in addis ababa, ethiopia, and issued a draft declaration on the situation in palestine and the middle east that expressed “full support for the palestinian people in their legitimate struggle against the israeli occupation”, naming israeli settlements as illegal and calling for boycotts and sanctions with israel. grassroots organizations like africa 4 palestine have also been key in the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement.

in south africa, comparisons between israel and south african apartheid have been prevalent since the 1990s and early 2000s. israel historically allied with apartheid-era south africa, while palestinians opposed south african apartheid, leading nelson mandela to support the palestinian liberation organization as "fighting for the right of self-determination"; over the years his statements have been joined by fellow black african freedom fighters like nozizwe madlala-routledge and desmond tutu. post-apartheid south africa has continued to be a strong ally to palestine, calling for israel to be declared “apartheid state”.

black and palestinian solidarities have continued into the 21st century. palestinian people raised money to send to survivors of hurricane katrina in the united states in 2005 (which disproportionately harmed black communities in new orleans and the gulf of mexico) and the devastating earthquake in haiti in 2010. in the past decade, the global black lives matter struggle has brought new emphasis to shared struggles. prison and police abolitionists have long noted the deadly exchange which brings together police, ICE, border patrol, and FBI agents from the united states to train with soldiers, police, and border agents from israel. palestinian freedom fighters supported the 2014 uprising in ferguson in the united states, and shared strategies for resisting state violence. over a thousand black leaders signed onto the 2015 black solidarity statement with palestine. the murder of george floyd by american cops in 2020 has sparked further allyship, including black lives matter protests in palestine, with organizations like the dream defenders making connections between palestinian and black activists.

this is just a short summary that i came up because i've been researching black and asian solidarities recently so i had some sources on hand; there's obviously so much more that i haven't covered, so please feel free to reblog with further additions to this history!

[mapsontheweb]

Hungary in 1867, 1941, and 2024.

From 1867 to today, Hungary's territory has undergone significant changes due to wars, treaties, and political shifts. In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise created the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, granting Hungary considerable autonomy within the empire. 

After World War I, the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 drastically reduced Hungary's territory by about 72% and its population by 64%, ceding regions to Romania, Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and Austria. In the interwar period, Hungary regained some territories through agreements with Nazi Germany: the First Vienna Award (1938) returned southern Slovakia and southern Carpathian Ruthenia, and the Second Vienna Award (1940) returned northern Transylvania from Romania. 

During World War II, Hungary occupied parts of Yugoslavia in 1941. However, post-war treaties, particularly the Treaty of Paris in 1947, reinstated the Trianon boundaries, nullifying the wartime gains. 

Throughout the Cold War era (1949-1989), Hungary was a socialist republic under Soviet influence, with its borders remaining consistent with those established in 1947. Following the fall of communism in 1989, Hungary transitioned to a democratic republic. Since 1991, Hungary has been a stable democratic state and a member of the European Union since 2004, with its current borders unchanged since 1947. Today, Hungary's borders are stable and internationally recognized.

by theflagmapguy_2.0

[determinate-negation]

Have you ever considered anarchism as opposed to socialism/communism? I only recently started taking anarchism more seriously bc I realized the goals of communism (borderless classless society) are not different from that of anarchism. And bc a lot of "communists" don't seem to care about internationalism and are campists. I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this. (Not trying to convince you in case it reads this way)

no. i disagree fundamentally with a lot of aspects of anarchism. state power isnt a bad thing and neither is authority when organized correctly, theyre actually necessary. the goals being the same means little when theres a disagreement on how to get there and disagreement on what an organized radical movement would look like in practice. thats actually what matters materially because thats the means to get to communism. i think theres some things marxists can learn from anarchists but overall im not moved. there are many socialist parties and movements i think that achieved great things and successfully fought imperialists and capitalists and that we can study, and i cant say the same for anarchism. i also find anarchist theory to be lacking when ive looked into it

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

There's a difference between "exporting revolution/creating unsustainable puppet states" and "practicing basic proletarian internationalism and mutually beneficial socialist development strategies." The latter is also not mutually exclusive with national liberation and revolutionary nationalism. This should be pretty basic lol.

[marxsposting]

I respectfully disagree with all of that. First of all, I haven't really seen any Western leftists express an interest in a CCP based Comintern. I particularly don't believe that the socialists who I think you mean when you say "Western leftist" would want that, because I assume you are referring more specifically to leftists who are either highly critical of or totally reject the PRC's version of socialism. I can't speak for all such people, obviously, but as someone who believes the modern PRC is best understood as a capitalist state, I think such a Comintern would be highly problematic and disorienting to the international communist movement.

But assuming the PRC was still a workers' state, even a deeply flawed one, I would absolutely want them to start a new Comintern! I have no illusions about the internationalism (or lack thereof) in the USSR, but I think this analysis totally conflates the failures and cynical retreats from that internationalism with making any effort toward internationalism in the first place.

Lenin's internationalism was not a mistake (although he certainly made errors). Far from ignoring national interests, he understood that many of the world's proletarians are oppressed on the basis of nationality, and thus true internationalism could only arise on the basis of sovereignty, not coercion. That's what Putin was talking about when he said the Ukrainian state was Lenin's invention, this is true to a degree. Ukraine and other separate socialist republics were both promised and then established because Lenin knew that winning over workers and peasants from all over the "prison house of nations" would only be possible if Great Russian nationalism was repudiated in no uncertain terms. That's why the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics had no specific nation in its name, the whole point was it aspired to be the workers' government of the world someday.

The early Soviet foreign policy was also heavily informed by this perspective, from the beginning it was understood that the Russian revolution would never be safe so long as it remained isolated. Lenin even professed that he would sacrifice Soviet rule in Russia for the revolution in Germany if it came to that, because he knew a successful German revolution would be a greater blow to world capitalism, benefiting the workers of Russia in the long term. This was also why the Third International had the policies that it did, Lenin thought that if the other socialist parties could "Bolshevize" fast enough, they could actually revolt and displace capitalism as a world system before the century was up.

Obviously this didn't happen. The USSR stayed isolated, they lost most of their original revolutionary proletariat in the civil war/imperial invasion, and the state was largely left to ex-tsarist bureaucrats who had no interest in world revolution, while the people were understandably getting tired and hungry. The perspective changed to "socialism in one country", which meant that rather than the Soviet national interest being dependent on the success of the workers' movement, the workers' movement's ultimate success was subordinated to the Soviet national interest. This perspective was what led to the USSR's uncomradely behavior toward the Eastern bloc countries they annexed post WWII, the CCP both pre and post 1949, and all of the non-state holding workers' parties both within and without the Comintern.

So is China's perspective on proletarian internationalism a correction of Lenin's ideology, or maybe of his less revolutionary successors? I would argue no, it's a continuation of socialism in one country, the idea that a workers' state should basically act geopolitically the same as a capitalist state would, in order to survive in a capitalist geopolitical order which will collapse organically as the workers' state surpasses it. China staying out of foreign socialist politics isn't out of respect for our national sovereignty, it's because it would undermine their soft power (soft power meaning diplomatic relations/networking with capitalist leaders). The idea that the bourgeois and the working class of a given country share any substantial "national interest" at this point is laughable, even more so now than when Marx was writing. If China cozies up to Biden while ignoring BLM/DSA/PSL/whatever, that's obviously not doing American workers any favors.

This is true even in the imperial periphery/global south/third world, the bourgeois of colonized countries have long been collaborators with imperialist capitalism, there's simply no other way for them to do good business. When the PRC substitutes itself for the USA in these arrangements it is not fighting imperialism, it's actually placing itself on the side of the bourgeois, which means against the proletariat and peasantry (the Maoist guerillas blowing up Chinese investments in the Philippines immediately springs to mind). The PRC is not neutrally waiting for the Real Revolutionaries to come through their crucible, it is actively taking the side of capital. In other words, they are not "aiding the country in general", Marxist analysis tells us that "the country in general" is a fiction, every nation is more and more divided into two great camps in direct opposition to one another. If foreign capital investment just helped countries rather than exploiting them, "developing" countries would actually be developing. I daresay there wouldn't have even needed to be a Chinese Revolution in the first place if this were true, Chang Kai Shek would have been able to fix the country's problems just fine!

So what would a truly internationalist foreign policy look like? I believe it would look a lot like Lenin's, but with less of a sense of immediacy, and a greater understanding of how the authority of a state holding communist party can distort movements abroad. The various workers' Internationals were all flawed in their own ways, but the idea was sound, and the socialist movement is worse off without one. Does this mean workers' states should actually sacrifice themselves totally to foreign revolutions that might not materialize? Absolutely not! There are real people living in there, and retreats toward more free market policies and concessions to imperialists will sometimes be necessary for the well-being of the country (the NEP and Brest-Litovsk are the classic example of this), but they have to actually be temporary and properly understood as steps backward. A workers' state is always in an uncomfortable position when it first emerges, having to critically decide when to use markets and when to plan in order to survive while keeping the workers in power, but ultimately we're communists because we believe in the superiority of planned economies and the eventual victory of the working class. Abandoning socialist movements to their fragmented state at a time when world capitalism has never been weaker (nor more dangerous to the planet and its oppressed peoples) isn't tough love, and it's not smart socialism, it's selling your inheritance for a bowl of pottage.

I think the western left to a certain degree resents that China doesn’t have a Comintern, and i think that’s also a significant reason they’ve survived this far as a socialist project

[latinotiktok]

Just want to speak as a latino seeing coverage of Venezuela here in the United States… of course the United States is going to tell us that the Socialist Bolivarian Revolution is villainous and that the elections are fraudulent. As if the United States doesn’t have one of the most pathetic voting systems of the whole world. As if the United States hasn’t intervened over and over in Latin American politics to install dictators that only serve US interests. As if they didn’t sieze billions of dollars of Citgo revenue when Chavez took power to create a depression and then blame it on socialism. The same people who are lying to us about Palestine are the same people who are lying to us about Venezuela. In 2018, Machado literally requested Benjamin Netanyahu’s support for a military intervention (i.e. coup attempt) in Venezuela. Machado is a staunch Zionist. She has promised that if the opposition is successful in overturning the Bolivarian Revolution, they will move the Venezuela’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Only five countries (including the U.S.) have established their embassies to Israel in Jerusalem because to do so is a flagrant violation of international law.

Please stop believing the United States or it’s latino allies have the best interest of latinos (domestically or internationally) at heart.

And don’t say I have no right to comment on this. As a Latino living in the belly of the beast, it is my duty to speak out against imperialism and the bullshit propaganda biden-harris try to spread.

I think your 'duty' should be trying to uplift the voices of your siblings who are actually living there and fighting for their lives instead of preaching you know more about the subject than them

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

"Our strength is unity! Long live the unity and cohesion of the peoples of the socialist commonwealth! Higher the banner of socialist internationalism!"

Soviet poster, 1976

Via Socialism Pictures