Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal have just written an amazing piece in the Grayzone Project regarding the Haymarket ‘socialist’ conference in Chicago organised by anti-communist groups the D.S.A and Jacobin magazine. The article links C.I.A group the National Endowment for Democracy funding for various individuals and groups at the conference shilling for regime change against Cuba, Nicaragua and the People’s Republic of China. For those who don’t know Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal are amazing journalist who contribute to the Greyzone project but also have a podcast called ‘Moderate Rebels’.
Reminder that social democrats are social fascists. Every "leftist" that isn't a Marxist-Leninist is an enemy, left unity is a myth and is undesirable.
Aaron Brown
AROUND THE ROSE, HOLD YOUR NOSE
Austin Bell
It's just right-opportunism which in the context of the U.S. means compromising with imperialism and the national security state.
ISO was always an odd group because it was extremely anti-Soviet and wouldn't even defend it as a "degenerated workers state" like other Trotskyists, but like Trotskyists believed in bottom-up revolution in the form of workers councils. And was highly centralized with an old leadership that had been there forever with strict control over the "line." Also it was entrenched on college campuses and rarely organized outside of colleges.
Anyways my guess is they always took the anti-Soviet position back in the day, but couldn't argue for U.S. imperialism openly. This has transferred today where if you read Socialist Worker – the ISO's newspaper – you'd see these bizarro pretzel-logic articles about it's the duty of socialists to support Jabhat Al Nusra; i.e. basically the CIA's position while coming short of endorsing open U.S. intervention. Because defending Assad is the tankie position and the ISO were not tankies, Assad is bad and should be overthrown or something. I dunno the whole thing is weird.
Thomas Smith
With things like this it's really hard to NOT be anti-american How do the rest of you (non Burgers) do it?
Carter Ward
Like part of Norton and Blumenthal's whole point here is that U.S. intervention and regime change typically *doesn't* take the form of open aggression or coup d'etats these days but in the form of "bottom-up" color revolutions which the ISO, curiously enough, fetishizes as the authentic workers' revolution blah blah and which "opens up the space" for socialism as opposed to the bureacratic command Stalinism as represented by Castro, Ortega, etc. This is why the ISO has generally supported all of these "revolutions." Like all it takes is a cutout for the CIA to hand a few thousand teenagers $20 bills in whatever the targeted country is, some cans of spraypaint and stencils with the raised fist and have them shut down parts of the capital as the U.S. squeezes the country's finances through its control of financial flows, the status of the dollar as the world's reserve currency, sanctions, etc.
I had popped into a few ISO meetings that were local and I found them to be somewhat mixed. Haymarket, their publisher, did have some good books though and they'd always have them out for sale. But it was really just a handful of the same people sitting in a classroom at the nearby college reading Trotsky and talking about current events. Not a fan of the Trotsky but I did like that they spent a lot of time talking about current events and this kind of "political education" which the DSA does not do so much. Unfortunately the political education was Trotskyism so you became actively dumber by going to ISO meetings, which was unfortunate.
The DSA on the other hand doesn't have any illusions about being revolutionary, and after Bernie got ratfucked out of the nomination, blew up to tens of thousands of members. And even better, DSA won't tell you what you can and can't believe. So it's much more attractive than the ISO and the members of the ISO seem to be liquidating into the DSA. Anyways I'm not sure what the divisions are internally, but it's interesting that someone was leaking these emails to Norton and Blumenthal so there is a struggle within the org. My impression is the Jacobin types and their people in the national leadership want to likewise liquidate the membership into the Bernie Sanders campaign, whereas others want to split from the Democrats altogether and focus on "base building" (groups like "Build").
Isaiah James
we don't. every communist should be anti-USAmerican.
Ian Phillips
I mean that's the tension. American socialists live in the big daddy of imperialism so they're being whipped to and fro by the contradictions of that. Either you join the PSL or CPUSA (actual tankies despite their reputation toward being liberals) and rule yourself out of having any support among the normies completely, or you join the ISO/DSA types and concede to right-wing talking points for a taste of power and MSNBC appearances. "Socialism isn't Venezuela" or whatever, of course that means your socialist newspaper is running articles about why socialists should support overthrowing the Venezuelan government or whatever. Should've joined the tankies.
Jacob Carter
I call them filthy traitors and infiltrators personally
Here's an interesting article on the subject of "color revolutions".
tl;dr: the New Left was inspired by the mass uprisings of 1968, in France, Czechoslovakia, etc. This experience, combined with readings like Rosa Luxemburg's The Mass Strike, led them to fetishize mass action and orient their parties towards intervening in any issue that would get people onto the streets, in the belief that they could then be won to socialism. However, revolutionary upheavals in the decades since the dissolution of the USSR have failed to affect any meaningful left wing change, and as a result the New Left parties are disoriented by new phenomenons like US-sponsored "color revolutions".
The article made me wonder: what exactly is a "color revolution" (or similar event like the Maidan protests)? For all its mass action, all the Maidan upheaval in Ukraine accomplished was the transfer of power from a corrupt, protectionist industrial oligarchy to a corrupt, free-trade agricultural and gas oligarchy. Were the Maidan protests just a cover for a typical coup? Was it a genuine revolution fooled by the propaganda of multimillionaire neolibs like Poroshenko?
Sparking revolution is openly pursued or threatened by US imperialism today - the effect of sanctions on Iran or using the "wheat weapon" in Syria is to incite "regime change from within". It's almost impossible to imagine the US saying that during the cold war. Is this the result of a defeat of socialist ideology and propaganda? Or is it just the absence of the USSR which could give material support to revolutionaries in the past?
Brandon Cox
It just dawned on me that propping up this “color revolution” narrative is probably the reason why a party as obviously right-wing and neoliberal as Popular Will calls itself “democratic socialist” and belongs to the Socialist International.
Dylan Wood
Check out this recent interview with Putin in the Financial Times.
First time he's spoken to a Western newspaper in some years (although he has given some T.V. interviews). Putin of course has his perspective and agenda but he thought world is becoming more unstable:
Brody Nelson
There's a recent episode of Radio War Nerd on Gene Sharp who is a really influential person in the peace and social justice left in the West. He was a sociological who did a lot of work on non-violent social change. But he was also working for the CIA and wrote books on how to use the same tactics to resist, say, a Soviet invasion of Western Europe which is kind of an interesting thing. And Sharp – who died of old age recently – thought he was working to make the world a better place by eliminating war, and "working within the system" to reform it from within, but his methodologies and theories are subsequently being applied by the United States overseas.
I think the way it works is through the extended universe of NGOs and so forth that are funded by the U.S. government. Sharp had a theory that it only takes 3% of the population to be mobilized in the street to topple a government. In the U.S. that would be around nine million people but there hasn't been anything like that. But this has been achieved in "color revolutions" where the revolution would be basically run by these NGOs that would craft talking points, distributing supplies, and like I was saying even paying protesters to show up – point being to get whoever they wanted out (Milosevic in Serbia, Shevardnadze in Georgia, etc.) and get their guy in. It's also kind of an interesting thing to note that fascists in the U.S. often fetishize this "3%" thing as well with "three percenter" militias.
Angel Miller
Since when?
Hunter Foster
I would join a disciplined ML or MLM group in my area but they don't exist and all I have to work with are DSA, I hope I can find some like minded people at the general meeting so we can peel off and find new leadership
DSA sucks, but I think it is better to work with a shitty group doing actual political work over your average LARP group.
Elijah Lee
There are actual Maoists in China that oppose CPC right deviation and get accused of being CIA but retards on here all the time. Obviously supporting regime change in Cuba and Nicaragua is pure idiocy, but China is an entirely reactionary, bourgeois power that needs to be toppled and replaced with a genuine worker’s state that will both oppose the US and serve the interests of Chinese workers.
Joshua Morgan
Yes, but China needs a proletarian revolution to replace the 'red' bourgeoisie, not a US imperialist backed regime.
Carter Jones
I agree, but there are far too many people on here who refuse to distinguish between Chinese communists trying to restore socialism and Chinese liberals trying to sell out to the West.
Kayden Walker
Yeah dengists are either rats or idiots
Blake Brown
Attitudes like that are why genuine communist parties don't get off the ground in the US
Adam Lopez
Yeah fuck the DSA, I'd only join it to suck members off of it and convert those who aren't complete oppurtunists
Owen Carter
Nice
Grayson Clark
I didn't mean give them oral sex, I used suck as an euphemism for pull, and I used off not as orgasm but off of the DSA.
Genuinely didn't mean to give the impression I did.
You could give them oral sex as a means of recruiting them into your Maoist sex cult
Juan Gutierrez
Sounds like heaven tbqh
Tyler Watson
Peel off is more idiomatic
Anthony Gomez
Wat. In the second article Lih argues that Kautsky betrayed his own writings by the tome of 1917 and that Lenin thought he was implementing it properly. How is that anti Lenin?
Labor aristocrats and the State Department go hand in hand.
Socialism w/ Chinese characteristics seems to be doing fine. Better than anything Western leftists have come up with this century.
Yup, this is why any organization that is agitating for destabilization or is shilled for by the NYT is automatically suspect. Maoist and human rights groups are just going to be pumped and dumped if a color revolution ever takes off. You have to be incredibly stupid you think the outcome is going to be anything other than the replacement of the CCP w/ a comprador elite that keeps China a sweatshop. You wont even get any cool new left aesthetics, as the traitors will absolutely be virtue signaling libs that appeal to burgers.
Cathedralist China will ensure Anglo liberal capitalist hegemony for the rest of the century, but I guess the "human rights" were worth it?
Jason Lewis
"Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" is the enemy of Palestinians, the workers and Peasants of China, and Filipinos who don't like the Duterte regime
Nathaniel Howard
Socialism /w Chinese characteristics is counter-revolutionary non-sense. It's a contradiction of everything fucking Marx and Engels wrote about. All it is fucking capitalism, you rat fuck. The Shanghai Stock Exchange isn't fucking socialist. Chinese billionaires aren't fucking socialist. Working directly with the IMF isn't fucking socialism, it's fucking global capitalism.
Christian Wright
“Anti-Imperalists” who defend Eastern Capitalism have no appeal in America, because shockingly hating America is an unpopular position in America. Who would’ve thought?
Elijah Perry
Perhaps China should recognize Israel's right to settle wherever it pleases then. Clearly it cannot get any worse.
They are richer, taller, and better protected now than ever before.
And a friend to Filipinos who do like his government. Can't be buddies with everyone.
Marx was the original accelerationist. The only way out of capitalism is through it.
China gives billions of dollars of loans to the third world outside the IMF without the economic exploitation part. That money ought to be spent on building warships, nukes, and welfare, but its too late now.
Sebastian Baker
Come on now this is a dumb take even for a one line post.
Ryder Young
Interesting, could you please point to literature from the PFLP, Hamas, Hezbollah, or another anti-Zionist resistance group that identifies China as an enemy of Palestinians?
Isaiah White
Deng was good, China is good, Xi will lead the world to a new era of socialism and dismantle the west. Ultraleftists can stay mad.
Anthony Perry
Their current party chairman worked for both Obama presidential campaigns and as a precinct captain during his senate run. Their previous chairman supported Obama and joined the Democratic Party after he quit. The SEP is more tankie than CPUSA.
Owen Miller
Yet paradoxically China today seems to be even more of an enemy to the U.S. than before Deng Xiaoping.
If you're referring to Bachtell, he is no longer the chairman. The CPUSA has two co-chairs: Rossana Cambron and Joe Sims. Anyways I thought the whole thing about being a tankie from the Trotskyist and leftcom points of view is that tankies make all these concessions and compromises with bourgeois forces and blah blah
Joshua Davis
Second meant for you
Easton Gray
Has the change in chairmen indicated a shift in policy in the CPUSA? I see they’re planning on reinstating the YCL.
Luis Nguyen
tbh I don't know actaully but the people I've met in the party have been preeeety damn tankie and I ran into one of their booths, and since I'm a commie they didn't just give them the usual "we are for workers" pitch but tried to woo me by noting they just purged a bunch of right-deviationists.
Jace Ward
That doesn’t make it socialist.
Ryan Phillips
I don't think that CPUSA are just infiltrated by the FBI, they just have retarded positions like how America is going to turn into a KKK dictatorship if you don't vote for the Dems. Accusing every party ever who says something you disagree with of being FBI is the reason why socialist parties stay small. Yet people here are completely fine with going into the DSA because "at least they are not a LARP group"? Why do you think you can't do political work with a smaller but actually communist party? Do you have delusions of grandeur that you yourself will become the new AOC if just hold a few really good speeches?
Ryder Campbell
The communist party doesn't say these things are socialist. They admit they have capitalists. You guys always sound as if the CPC wants to "hide" the capitalist aspect of their economy or make mental gymnastics about how capitalists are socialists or something, when they in fact don't do that. They however argue that the socialist sector is dominant.
Anthony Adams
True, but I don't think it's very useful to just shout "revisionist" at them or treat them in this callous way when in some important respects the Chinese haven't backslided, although on the other hand we don't want to just dismiss accusations of revisionism or treat China too lightly or ignore the ways in which they have.
I think a whole lot of words have been shouted at people online because of the CPUSA's Bachtell's statement about the Dems although yeah I agree and it's a bit strange considering the DSA is an anti-communist organization, structurally, and basically a functional constituency of the Democrats.
My impression of much communist opinion (outside of here, because this place is bad) is that the U.S. is essentially an oligarchical-fascist structure anyways, and saying Trump and the people around him are white supremacists isn't shocking at all, really, that's just who they are. Some top Chinese officials like Wang Huning, the Politburo member and Xi advisor, has written books where he lays out the U.S. system and describes at a fascist system, basically. Of course if you say this people will say you're being hyperbolic but it's more that fascism is mainly just a weapon and how deadly and fascist the U.S. is going to be at any particular moment is contingent.
Noah Rodriguez
I know that YCL criticized the main party for becoming too liberal, leading ultimately to the party under Bachtell to disband the YCL. That Bachtell is no longer chairman’s and the YCL is going to be reinstated made me wonder if this is a turn against the old liberal tendencies within the party.
David Clark
China sells and purchases arms to and from Isreal all the time, as well as investing in the parasitic economy of the Zionist entity, you can read all about it in bourgeois sources.
Gavin White
Yes, China trades with Israel. It also trades with the #1 enemy of Palestinians, the USA. Now please show me a source where any of the major anti-Zionist militias call China the enemy of Palestinians.
Levi Hill
China is only the enemy of the palestinian people if a local militia specifically says they are?
Colton Hernandez
This makes no sense because socialism and capitalism can’t coexist in the same territory. Socialism is when the worker’s control the means of production, and capitalism is when the bourgeois control the means of production. Their can be no synthesis between the two.
Yeah and CNN claims that China is genociding muslims. Doesn’t make it true. The US, like most countries today, is a bourgeois liberal democracy. You can criticize liberal democracy without calling it fascist.
Julian Miller
Yes, they have much more authority than shitposters on Zig Forums.
Landon Morgan
Except things have fundamentally changed since Mao’s or even Deng’s day. China no longer opposes the US on an anti-imperialist basis like they did in the past. Their confrontation is one between rival imperialist powers. Taking sides between them is like taking sides in WW1. I see very little to redeem China’s government in the eyes of socialists. Only decent argument used to defend China is the one that holds that multipolarity is desirable and that we haven’t quite reached it yet. However this argument only holds true when you concede that revolutionary defeatism should be adopted once multipolarity is achieved.
Joseph Price
If Palestinian militias denounced everybody who traded with the US and Israel then they’d have to denounce the whole world.
Xavier Ward
Interesting that they don't do that then, huh. Almost as if they have a strategy, focus, discipline, etc. Unlike people ITT screaming that China of all countries is "the enemy of Palestinians." So on the one hand, we have anti-Zionist militias who plainly say that the USA, Israel, and often some assortment of other US pawns (such as Saudi Arabia) are the enemy. On the other hand, we have 8ch shitposters blaming China. Who should I listen to? Note I am not asking for sources as a simple rhetorical question. If you have some literature from the PFLP on the issue, for example, then I'd love to see it. But it seems you're more interested in coming up with your own denunciations rather than actually listening to the authoritative figures on the topic.
Jaxon Martin
Spain went fascist more easily because of leftist infighting.
Noah Campbell
China isn't only guilty of supporting Isreal, but the entire imperialist system, CPI (Maoist) wrote a 40 page report on how China is an integral part of imperialism today, an enemy of it's own proletariat and the world's.
Ian Russell
I think there is a good case for that, or at very least part of it. Other parties that have criticized the CPC in this way include the Communist Party of the Philippines. Parties that haven't issued denunciations of this sort include the WPK and the Communist Party of Cuba. The various irrelevant western sects are also split on the issue of course. Here is the report I think you're talking about, btw. It's always good to cite your sources. This Indian site also has a good issue about China: rupe-india.org/59/contents.html Castro denounced Deng as a "parody of Hitler," and was completely justified in doing so. Deng was a genuine fascist infiltrator who directly collaborated with the USA, stabbing numerous 3rd world revolutionary movements in the back and even invading Vietnam. His domestic record was no better, with the destruction of the Iron Rice Bowl and schools and hospitals, a big rise in crime, prostitution, and hunger, and the transformation of China into a base for foreign sweatshops. China unquestionably became part of the global value chain, much like many of its neighbors. There is still evidence that China's military is being used against workers, for instance its contributions to UN forces that occupy Haiti.
With all that said, I still think it is ridiculous and inappropriate to start denouncing China as "the enemy of Palestinians" in a thread that's exposing regime change operations, especially when none of the people taking this stance can find any Palestinian literature denouncing China in this way. I've explained that already, but I'd like to also emphasize that this is a thread about treacherous Western Socdems shilling for regime change. Nothing that Jacobinmag or the ISO has in mind will ever do any workers in China or Palestine any good. As well, I assume these posters live in an English-speaking country. So why are they hand-crafting their own personal denunciations and stances against China?
Ryder Sullivan
Anyone here have experience with Avakian's RCP?
Gabriel Ramirez
Rationalize it all you want, but the fact is that China is complicit in Israeli apartheid. The fact that Palestinians focus their anger at the more direct culprits doesn’t change the fact that China buys and sells weapons which are used to oppress Palestinians. China’s relationship to Israel is not a matter of opinion, it’s an objective fact.
Xavier Russell
I would like some sauce please
Adrian Campbell
China follows the modern Russian policy of simultaneously having good relations with Israel and states that want to destroy it.
Yes, it is worth asking what made him change his mind or his line. Whether out of his beliefs or diplomacy in a tough situation. If the latter, why is it that Western communists are absolved of a similar responsibility?
Austin Collins
pot calling the kettle black, that's how you yankees say it eh
Because it doesn't sanction Israel and every other state that does bad things? Is it also the enemy of the Middle East, Africa and Latin America for not nuking the US and the UK?
Socialism with Chinese characteristics massively improved the lives of the workers and peasants of China.
Because it didn't sanction or blockade the Philippines after the Filipino people voted for him?
Amazing how that's the policy of most non-Western states because it's really the "default" position and dumbshit Westerners see it as a Russian thing.
Jason Carter
The CCP supports Deuterte’s war against the New People’s Army.
Asher Wright
Not usually for socialist states. wrong Russia is a prominent example given their relations with the Axis of Resistance and with Israel
Josiah Long
Socialism with Chinese characteristics isn't socialism.
David Sanders
Many British and Australian trots share the same autistic position. To be against Salafism or a "revolution" lead by Muslims is Islamophobic to them.
Nolan Harris
Are the majority of Syrians "islamophobic" and not "true Muslims" according to them?
no, according to them evil Assad and his Alawi minority magically rule over and oppress all the good Sunni Syrians… kind of like Zig Forums's jewish phantasm
Luis Bennett
"Journalists" are on the payroll.
Daniel Roberts
"Supports" how?
Well it's not the enemy of the workers or peasants.
Dominic Lopez
They are allied to the regime.
Eli King
wow the communists dont break diplomatic relations with every other state, their bad now
To be fair, the Chinese don't claim they'll reach communism by 2050, just that what they call the primary stage of socialism will presumably be replaced with a higher stage, while still remaining socialism.
Nathan Flores
How do you peacefully remove or disenfranchise the economic elite of the PRC (who would oppose any sort of moves towards nationalization) when economic power always translates into political power?
Landon Ramirez
Second cultural revolution
Levi Mitchell
Just keep having them until everyone gets it!
Thomas Walker
It's not a matter of "you get and believe in Mao Zedong Thought", it's that if you poke your head out and say dumb shit you're getting a dunce cap and a big character poster if not getting beat up by red guards.
Jeremiah Kelly
b-but if they don't get it, kill them
Blake Nguyen
Do you think this little faggot will let Alibaba be natioanlized? No he won’t.
