/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

Doing a write up on this currently, among other things. Long and short of it is I’m starting to see a kind of national sentiment as emanations of universality rather than (as popularly believed) false consciousness or an obstacle to working class consciousness.

tribalism is inate, ethnocentrism is not.
the only problem it poses for communism is the ideological tribalism of the idiots who purport to want to build it. once communism exists, man's natural tendency to tribalism is no more a barrier than it is under capitalism - people don't reject working for Walmart on the ground that they've got deep tribal links to their family and ancestors, those bonds are torn apart by the economic system. instead people build new tribal identities - to their employer, to their fandom, to their preferred web community, to their preferred ideology in the marketplace of ideas, to their preferred soda brand. the fundamental mechanism remains intact, but it contains no solace for those who'd like to protect feudal social relations from capitalism, and is equally hopeless for those who'd like to protect capitalist social relations from communism.
So too, under communism, would man's tribal instincts likely be channelled into inane causes like civic pride for their local area and rivalry with other, fundamentally identical areas.

>>1844601
Tribalism and ethnocentrism aren’t synonymous, the very concept of the nation-state inherently requires the capacity for people to organize outside of tribalism, class society has essentially always transcended tribalism as its almost inherently imperialist and brings together many communities to bow to a single ruling class, and people preferring their own culture doesn’t lead to war, conquest, slavery, and genocide without a state and ruling class leading the way.

Shit thread, sorry OP

>>1844609
>>1844608
ok but what about nepotism in hiring for example when a middle manager only hires people from their own family/ethnic/religion group.

tribalism isn't really a thing under the capitalist mode of production.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm

>>1844613
oh great i guess all racism and ethnic conflict has totally ceased worldwide then.

>>1844614
Have you ever considered that maybe an entire ideology that managed to group together millions of people from warring cultures under one banner goes a bit beyond mere tribalism and should be more seriously scrutinized?
It’s not as if “White” is a transhistorical identity that existed prior to European colonialism.

Culture is a set of traditions, belief systems and behavioral patterns and mannerisms which most people in a given community adhere to and interact with eachother through. For example, bowing vs handshakes are an example of unique cultural practices that differentiate how people interact. Using the middle finger vs using the pinky finger is another example. Subcultures can be created out of mainstream culture based on heavy cultural influence, like chicano culture or the goth subculture that underlied boring suburban communities where everything's depressing and boring.
Culture industry, the mass production of cultural raw material into cultural commodities and spectacles, is the greatest enemy of true culture. Spectacle is culture spun through the lens of media into a warped and transfigured expression of itself. Imagine comparing a fish in water to goldfish cheese crackers. The cultural concepts remain the same, but the quintessence of them are irrevocably distinct, having very little to do with their original concept.
Cosmopolitanism is the delusion that spectacle has rendered culture entirely obsolete. Instead what it has done is created new cultures as a necessary reaction to the "bread and circus" social model. Zoomers are reacting to internet addiction by such ineffective methods as "hustling" and "dopamine detoxing", but as time goes on cultural phenomenon will develop into more effective methods of dealing with such problems, or else society will cease to exist in its current form due to incels and hikikimoris and loneliness epidemics and gold-digging behavior and similar antisocial phenomenon conspiring to destabilize the social realm to such an extent that society is incapable of reproducing itself, ala japan or south korea.
Preference for ones' own culture is nothing more than a preference. You might prefer dealing with people who shake your hand normally, as opposed to stupid normie "secret handshakes", or you might prefer talking to protestants instead of catholics, but these are personal preferences, nothing more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHigKlDn1nE
Watch this video. It's framed as a response to another youtuber, but your question is indirectly addressed by it.

>>1844601
>Is Tribalism, ethnocentrism, and preference for ones own people, religion, and culture inevitable?
No, not at all. You are very unlikely to be Japanese, but you probably have hundreds of images from their cartoons. Plus, toss the evolution speak out the window, human brains evolved for extreme malleability and socialization - which is why we can live in these conditions that are nothing like what our ancestors evolved in.

>>1844601
Nothing re-education cant fix.

>>1844631
This. The only two people I would legitimately consider myself biased against are whites and Indians and re-education would fix both cases

>>1844611
Not sure what that has to do with what I said, but the fact is in-group preference is a thing and people have a hard time accepting it. I remember an ethics class I had in Uni; the professor mentioned if you faced either your kids dying in a house fire or your neighbors kids, you’d choose to save your kids first. Not one student wanted to admit they would, but only one tried to argue it—and even then she wouldn’t say “I’d let my kids die to save my neighbors’ kids.” Just that she thought you should treat everyone equally.

Of course on the western left the ethical dilemma looks a bit different. The fire isn’t here yet and you’ve got a debate between the people advocating running into their neighbors house to save them, and the people who want to dump everything flammable on their neighbors house in hopes of saving their home. The Left will say that because our house is bigger we’ve got a moral obligation to rescue our neighbors and shelter them. The Right will say that because our house is bigger it just means there’s more to burn. The Left becomes convinced that our house deserves to burn, and the Right imagines that the Left is burning houses down.

>>1844655
What you're ignoring is that most groups that have been "in-grouped" are entirely artificial constructions

>>1844608
>Long and short of it is I’m starting to see a kind of national sentiment as emanations of universality
Yeah, and? You can take those emanations and expand to the whole of humanity because it's all an abstraction beyond your actual 150 member tribe. Anyone beyond your close 150 is a stranger. 300 million or 8 billion, doesn't matter at that point. The reason why it's considered false consciousness is because it doesn't make sense to have preferential care for a smaller group abstraction (nation) at the exclusion of the bigger group abstraction(humanity).

>>1844676
Friendship is an artificial construction too, ditto with love, that doesn’t mean I’ll treat every stranger like my friends.

>>1844680
The flaw of this thinking is the belief that loving, say, your family is somehow taking away love or empathy rightly meant for some kids you don’t know in Afghanistan.

>>1844695
Lmao tf is this nonsense?
No, “friendship” isn’t an artificial construction the way “Whiteness” is, a friend is simply a close associate that isn’t necessarily a blood relative nor purely strategic ally, there’s a reason it transcends cultures, all human societies have conceptions of friendship, this being more pronounced in settled agrarian and especially urban societies where non-related people are grouped closely together continuously. “Friendship” is not a purely historically contingent phenomenon, it’s not something where you can go back and trace its historical evolution down to documents and journals demonstrating the evolving construction of “friend” as an idea as you can for “Race” or “White People/Black People”.

I think you really are turning yourself into a fascist dude.

just watch this:
>>1844622

>>1844717
To explain my point a little, “it’s all an artificial construct” hits the same to me as some freshman who just took Philosophy 101 and learned what solipsism is, so now he’s annoying everyone by huffing “well how do we, like, know what’s real? This could all be an illusion.” It’s not the revelation you think it is—I’ve still got to get up and clock into work every morning. I don’t give a fuck if reality is “real” or not.

I mean for however much people will act like they’re Neo waking up from the Matrix for recognizing “nations” are a social construction those “artificial constructs” have proven to be more robust, adaptable, and effective than their own ideas. Nationalism and national sentiment was a major contributor to the fall of the USSR. And for as much as people will point to the disparity in resources between it and western countries, it’s not like the West could pull out huge advertisements or direct national education policy to indoctrinate people into nationalism. The USSR had a great deal of control over those two aspects of society and it still was overcome by national sentiments. Shit, one only has to look at the Sino-Soviet, Sino-Albanian, and Soviet-Yugoslav splits to see that for as much as nations being artificial constructs is true, the truth was unable to transcend the sentiments driving all these divisions.

From where I’m standing, the anti-nationalism of Socialism reflects a similar drive as the “Cult of Reason” was for liberalism. They made a big hubbub in the French Revolution around overcoming the backwards superstitions of the Church, but the fact is the attempts to deify reason over “peasant superstition” totally failed. Liberalism ended up making some accommodations (in its favor) with the Church, rather than ripping the bandaid off in its entirety. What’s especially funny is you’ll find plenty of leftists today; earnest and intelligent ones, who recognize that the militant atheism of the Stalin years was a mistake, that it did more harm than good, and they’ve “loosened” their contempt for it enough that you’ve got Hakim—a practicing Muslim—responding to Hamas’ victories by actively proselytizing Islam. So where’s the line drawn? We make space for one artificial construction but say the other is okay? Believing in a supernatural entity running a grand moral experiment is somehow more acceptable than recognizing a kind of national affinity? You can refuse to eat Bacon because you think your God commands you to, but God-forbid you talk about your nation’s homeless problem without focusing on starvation in Sudan.

What’s the end goal here, I’ve got to ask? Does anyone here honestly, honestly think, that if you burn enough flags and talk about how much you despise your country enough a revolution will just manifest and be victorious? Does anyone think that China, out of international solidarity, would support Western socialists in armed struggle when they won’t even do that for the Maoists in India and the Philippines? Do they think that North Koreans are so international that they’d leap at the chance of potentially dying to liberate the, what, French proletariat? And that the second any of those French proles show a French flag, the Norks would be repelled like garlic with a Vampire?

Apologies for venting, but can anyone actually make a case for this beyond “that’s the way it’s always been” or vague mantras like “No one country can overcome Capitalism.”

>>1844779
>What’s the end goal in leftists not upholding nations and the White Race TM and religious superstition?
<Dude like reactionaries have won out before, why not except le Science as just a social construct and embrace reaction and divine rule to con the stupid rubes bro?
Mate, I’m telling you, every single thing you post here these days reads like a former socialist pipelining himself into fascism, down to getting mad whenever people point it out
Like did you not notice after a while you started spewing stupidpol tier nonsense about le heckin campus academic leftists turning wholesome “working people” against leftism by appealing to “weakness” (organizing marginalized proletarians) and rejecting “strength” (criticizing male, racial, and national chauvinism); rather than state repression repeatedly defeating these groups through increasingly sophisticated tactics and the same negative integration tactics you have psyoped yourself into promoting
Regarding the USSR, the Bolsheviks consciously chose to foolishly uphold ethno-nationalism and the creation of separate competitive nations came down to the incentives of local bureaucracies, just as how Western nation-state formation was ultimately a state and ruling class program

The problem is that you genuinely cannot see that you yourself are embracing idealism, starting with your inability to historicize nation-states and nationalism

>>1844817
Yknow that’s funny because from my perspective most of my posts recently have been some variation of either historical elaboration or frankly mild critique followed by
>”KILL YOURSELF FASCIST SCUM!”
>”YOU MORON! YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKING RUBE!”
>”ALL YOU CRACKERS ARE REACTIONARY!”
>”YOU’RE HOPELESS!”
>Some schizo posing as me trying to conflate “can you stop being so hostile” with panicking over wokeness
<“Hey man, your posts are worrying me. You aren’t becoming fascist are you?”
It’s especially funny given the content of plenty of my posts has been that you’ve got to focus on appealing to people rather than trying to browbeat them into submission.

If I can describe my current relationship with the broader Left right now: it’s gone sour. It’s like being in a romantic relationship with a woman who you liked at one point, but progressed to constantly telling “jokes” the punchline of which is always some variation of how awful you are. After the jokes come nitpicking, then arguments, then every time you leave the house, or hangout with your female friends, it boils down to her yelling—“Are you cheating on me?! You’re cheating on me, aren’t you?!”

Forgive me for the metaphor, I just feel like it’s as close to describing how I feel these days. No, I’m not a fascist and I don’t have any intention of becoming one; they’re noxious cretins. But it’s obvious enough this relationship isn’t working out, and so the mature thing is to cut it off now. No, that doesn’t mean rebounding with the first woman with a pulse, but it does mean stepping away from something toxic.

So personally I don’t consider myself to be much of a “Marxist” anymore. Which isn’t to say I consider Marx “wrong” in some totality. Capitalism remains unsustainable and destroying the planet, but I much prefer the more generic label of “socialist”. And I’m trying to do a little soul searching to find a set of politics that works for me. Most likely I’d be creating my own,

>>1844881
everybody knows you are not a fascist. Or at least the people that matters know that you are a not a fascist

>>1844881
Like, if people really thought you were an fascist, you would be banned already.

>>1844881
Have you ever considered that there may be a reason you consistently get that response that doesn’t boil down to “Well leftists just fear fascists too much to try understanding them, well leftists just don’t self-critique!” Like I’m highly critical of MLs, anarchists, and myself, so idk about that mate. Me personally, what I don’t see you do much of is remotely engage in any sort of materialist analysis these days, no real discussion of how fascists came to power other than their own ramblings about the volk and the nation and strength, have sort of succumbed to a weird historically cyclical/inevitable view where Marxists v Fascists dates back to the Roman patricians vs the slaves, have regressed away from the historically demonstrable origin of nationalism as a class project to form a constituency and readymade state format for the needs of that class (for instance, you ignore the fact that nation-states have mostly, almost exclusively been established via negative integration and only emerged in a very specific social context of the rise of a ruling class whose wealth was based in interconnected townships in the kingdom rather than fields throughout the kingdom in the European example, and by kicking out foreign empires in the non-European examples), and just generally have more or less gone away from a non-aesthetic critique of fascism, for instance, your criticism of MAGA types and poltards has devolved into them being weak, rather than them being fascists or proto-fascists.

>>1844884
>>1844885
I genuinely think CPUSA anon has regressed towards idealism and chauvinism tbh

>>1844886
10/10 critique of critique. I knew there was something fishy with that capital-W Will talk.

>Is Tribalism, ethnocentrism […] inevitable?
no.
>is […] preference for ones own people*1, religion*2, and culture inevitable?
<*1, in the sense of people with the same cultures / subcultures
<*2, that's already covered by culture
Otherwise, yeah.
> And if so, doesn't this hurt the universalism of communism?
Nah it'd just amount to differing tastes. People will want co-workers with similar tastes, but if they don't get that they can just gather after work. We already see this with capitalism, where some professions have more furries or whatnot than others.

>>1844884
>>1844885
I appreciate the kind words, but I’m gonna have to stand firm on just finding my own way of doing things. Might have to drop the CPUSA flag in that case, wouldn’t want to misrepresent the party.

>>1844886
Call me a relativist, but if a guy boasts on and on about how he’s studied physics and watched hours of videos on how to play Billiards, only to lose to Larry the Barfly—who insists he can only play while drunk—I’m not gonna take him seriously. And the fucking gall to insist I keep betting my money on him when he keeps losing, it’s absurd.

Oh, but your arm. The old sports injury in your arm. Everytime you lose its cause your arm starts spasming at the worst possible time. Larry is lucky he doesn’t have to play with such a debilitating injury.

Might I suggest you stop playing Billiards if your arm keeps acting up?
>”But I know physics and Larry thinks he only plays well drunk! Are you saying you don’t believe in physics?!”
No. But it’s clear your physics degree isn’t doing anything for you.

>>1844917
Mate, you have no idea how ironic this shit is to me, I have been shat on consistently here for having my own way of doing things, the resistance to criticism and especially self-criticism many radical leftists, the adherence to dogmatism, the veneration of past defeated movements and historically recognized thinkers, the tendency to act in ways that alienate non-ideologically committed people, the tendency to research and read based on confirmation bias rather than real attempts at discovering facts and interrogating narratives about history and the like are all things I routinely, angrily critique on this board.

When I say, “You seem like someone that’s drifting towards fascism”, I don’t mean you’re heterodox by the standards of a radical leftist, I like heterodox thinkers, I think they operate more in line as Marx himself, who is very heterodox by the standards of mainstream sociopolitical economy. I like most of the heterodox posters on this board, as they work to break up what would otherwise be a very boring circlejerk of edgy stalinists. When I say it seems like you’re drifting towards fascism I mean that much of what you write seems very much like you sympathize with fascism on a philosophical level and have drifted from analyzing the actual sociohistorical dimensions and contingency of historical fascism and its ideological forebears to sort of just accepting the claims of non-Hitlerian/post-Hitlerian fascists about their ideology and philosophy and using this to basically critique leftists as booking reading soycucks

>>1844779
i dont see at all how was ussr killed by nationalism, it was not destroyed by ppl who wanted to make their nation great again but by sellouts who wanted porkie power and luxury.
even the feuds betweens socialists states werent rooted in nationalism but on disagreements in theory, implementation of socialism, contesting the leadership of the ussr (and ussr taking it for granted)

>>1844695
>The flaw of this thinking is the belief that loving, say, your family is somehow taking away love or empathy rightly meant for some kids you don’t know in Afghanistan.
That does not that follow. Family is part of the 150 people your brain considers part of the tribe. On the other hand a random kid in Afghanistan is the same as some random kid in Hawaii as far as being strangers.

Nationalism is arbitrary. Why say only American kids in Guam matter but not kids in Mongolia? Do you really care more about people who are born on Puerto Rico vs the Dominican Republic? Literally right next to each other, but one has American citizenship the other doesn't. Why stop at one nationality at that point?

>>1844925
Holy shit sasuke poster anon, welcome back. I thought you were dead.
You're one of the few anarchists on this board that's filled with MLs. While I don't agree with most of your views it's really good to have you around for some variety. Not the anon you're replying to btw.

Humans are fundamentally social creatures, insofar as thats true, tribalism is inevitable. People have only so many slots for close relations and they must have them to self-actualize. Because those people suffice the required human need of sociality and community, people will act in favour of the community that supports them. The community that in a very real way built them, is them.

The pre-requisite for communism is a taste for trust. Communism is generally high trust and to produce such a state of being we would need people who have spent a lot of time in high-trust organisations.
People need to know how to hold meetings and have them efficiently get through whats necessary., The people need to have independently decided certain public works have needed to be done and organised with those of their tribe (or community, or cadre or church or affinity group or whatever high-trust organisation is their baseline community) to see them done outside of capitalist exchange relations.
To get high-trust groups they need to be pressure tested by struggle. they need to come up with an action try it and succeed. Or even better, try it, fail and still have enough trust and impetus to try again.

As it stands people in the west (can't speak to anywhere else really but i've certainly felt that its similar in the non-western states i've been in) don't have a personal experience with existing in high-trust organisations. Hell, most people barely even have friends they could trust to rely upon let alone do risky political work with.

Before we even talk about whether tribalism spells the death knell of communism, we have to achieve any measure of power that would make that discussion necessary. The tribe is the only way you get there.
Specially now that food, housing and even in some places water are becoming more scarce, its not whether tribalism hurts us its how do we build tribes right now.

When i say tribe i specifically mean high-trust organisations that you rely atleast minorly on for production or gathering of your basic human needs. An organisation of which you interact with on an if not daily but weekly basis. Without groups like this i don't see how we would manage the social cohesion to pull off revolutions.

tribalism isn't really a thing under the capitalist mode of production.

>>1844948
> Family is part of the 150 people your brain considers part of the tribe.
Sounds like bourgeois pseudoscience.
>Nationalism is arbitrary.
Its not and its been explained a couple times already theres even a whole textbook about it.

>>1845321
>Sounds like bourgeois pseudoscience.
150 might be too low of a number but it's impossible to know even 100,000 people.That's why we abstract humanity, so why limit it to 300 million people?
>Its not
If you are born within inside the USA you are American, If you are born one foot away out you are not. How is random geography not an arbitrary way of organizing human society?
> its been explained a couple times
Then please summarize why I'm wrong.
>theres even a whole textbook about it.
A WHOLE textbook!? It must be true then!

>>1845380
>If you are born within inside the USA you are American, If you are born one foot away out you are not
this is a result of the 14th amendment which was made to counteract dredd scott decision which said only white people could be us citizens. The 14th amendment was not about immigration it was about making black people US citizens.

>>1845380
>>1845392
>14th amendment
Doesn't change my point. People are born without cultural identity or language. It is imposed upon them by the community they were randomly born to. Just make that process larger than a single geographic area and now you have a large "nation".
America was originally just 13 colonies on the east coast. Now it covers the entire North American Continent, various islands around the world and Alaska. It keep on expanding and adding in citizens. How it does it doesn't matter
Theoretically, if it goes far enough, eventually get all of humanity in the same "nation."
Look at the "Han Chinese." They used to be 100s of separate "ethnic groups" but are now one "ethnic group" of 1.4 billion. Slightly different, but still an application of the same process.

No.
Source: Italy.

>>1845664
Explain

>>1844948
Going to take a break from politics posting on here for a bit to work on Call of Cthulhu scenario but I figure I owe you a response, for clarifications sake at least.

I'm not defining "Nationalism" as "don't give a rat's ass about foreigners" and while I don't want to brag, I believe the best way to illustrate my point is to mention that I've donated a few hundred dollars to Ummah Relief. I don't donate to charity all that often (somewhat cynical about the whole NGO complex) but the situation in Palestine was bad enough that I wanted to do something other than just attend a local protest and cheer on the protesters (not to say I haven't done that, either).

If I can elaborate on the nation (including the nation-state) a bit. In material terms it exists as a set of laws, customs, and markets, and infrastructure distinct from the wider global economy in the same way your house is distinct from your neighborhood: a part of it but not apart from it. Within that grouping of infrastructure and law and markets and so on is a form of collectivity that, thus far, has proven itself to be the largest kind of collectivity that the individual subject within a nation can influence directly. This distinguishes itself from the old feudal relations that nationalism broke off from because the individual is ostensibly part of the nation rather than a subject under it. While feudalism had a set of responsibilities that flowed to and from the monarch to his subjects, the "theory" of the nation-state dissolves this distinction. Like a ship and it's crew I suppose; and while some aboard the crew may have been forced to join by circumstance, on the open water there's no choice but to try to get the thing to port. It's a political grouping that matters especially in existential decisions; things like war, peace, and famine.

Certainly while transnational organizations can alleviate famine, it's only when the nation manages to stabilize and feed itself that it can hope to eliminate famine within its borders. I think Thomas Sankara had something to say on this, I believe he mentioned western countries would send food, but what his nation needed was seeds and farm equipment, in short, everything to produce food for themselves.

Often enough the artificial political grouping of being "in a nation" supersedes local concerns. If we hear a car or some other commodity gets completely banned "in America" and we live in California, barring certain exceptions (America's federal system is weird like that) we will generally presume that it becomes unavailable to us. If a country declares war "on America" then the Hawaiian and I are in the same boat, unlike if a country were to declare war on, say, Canada.

Plus, the "market within a global market" creates more opportunities for a kind of cross-pollination and association of fellows then what exists in the global market (the internet has alleviated this but not annihilated it in its entirety). I grew up knowing people who'd lost loved ones on 9/11, despite being at the other end of the country. While California is a diverse place, I've yet to meet someone directly impacted by the London Tube bombings, for example.

Now as for an idealistic note (and I believe a lot of the western left has abandoned any notion that "ideas" can motivate people into action or even nudge material circumstances) the nation also represents a kind of social reality. Our conception of subjective reality I suppose. People get annoyed about "Americans" talking as though they're the only nation on the planet (for example, wondering how cashiers get so good at bagging groceries when such a thing is discouraged in Europe, expecting to tip at every restaurant you go to) but it's something that exists in greater or lesser form throughout the globe. Europeans sure like to pretend "The World" just means Europe + her former settler-colonies; they also have a poor idea of how big our country is. What's "normal" in one country is "bizarre" in another, and all too often the national experience is projected as a universal one. Sure certain nations (often in the periphery) may develop a more "global" outlook, in part because the globe usually shows up to stomp them down and take their stuff, but the most radical trends within those nations is the re-assertion of national sovereignty against global plunder, not the abolition of the nation-state.

Call it National Realism if you want. People have trouble imagining an absence or cessation of something, and so the destruction of the subjective reality of the nation only ever implies a catastrophe which leads to millions of people dead (only the insane would want that) or the imposition of a new subjective reality upon the masses (i.e. conquest by another nation) it never means "something newer and better replaces it."

There have been plenty of cases of people revolting against governments or individuals, but I can't think of one single instance in history where people form a successful mass revolution against the nation. Not a single one. But much like how the Right is obsessed with banning abortion despite the obvious problems their stance is causing them, the Left is obsessed with revolting against "the nation" as though it could ever mean anything to people more than revolting against collective reality, revolting against the masses. It has never once worked.

That's all I've got to say on the matter currently.

>>1845941
>set of laws, customs, and markets, and infrastructure distinct from the wider global economy
The laws, customs, and infrastructure is controlled by the ruling classes, meaning the limits and collectivity of the nation are imposed by forces outside of it. This separation between nations is fake. If something was banned in America it would be because the ruling class imposed that on the lands they own and control.
>This distinguishes itself from the old feudal relations that nationalism broke off from
Here you are saying that nationalism is a new form of social organization different from the old, yet why do you consider it so fundamental if it hasn't existed for very long? If anything this just shows it's an aberration.
>part of the nation rather than a subject under it
You are a subject under the nation. Do something against a law you never agreed to be under and just see how much you "influence directly" the prison system.
>everything to produce food for themselves.
Many nations that don't have enough arable land to feed themselves even if outside interference was eliminated. Funny enough you are right in that your national history does influence the way you think; you are thinking of nations like they are America. America is largely "independent" only because of it's history of conquest.
>I can't think of one single instance in history where people form a successful mass revolution against the nation.
What are you talking about? Literally every single civil war where more than one nation came out of the conflict proves that nations can be endless divided. Meaning if you keep fighting you can subdivide the nation until it's individual against individual.
On the other hand, conquests proves nations can be grown and incorporate new citizens. Theoretically if a nation is successful enough it can absorb all the smaller nations into itself making the "nation" just mean Humanity. The concept when taken to it's conclusions eliminates itself.

>>1845998
At work so I can’t respond as in depth as I want. Got to be brief.

Most civil wars are fought between two or more groups trying to assert control over the government an existing nation, not destroy it in its entirety. There are secessionist civil wars too, and the background of those are usually a combination of different cultures/economic/social systems being arbitrarily forced into a single political entity. Usually one culture comes to dominate another, and so the other culture rebels to, you guess it, form their own nation. They aren’t ever rebelling to form “the nation of mankind” in its entirety.

But above all that the thing that’s gotten me to reevaluate the nation is how incoherent the left’s anti-nationalism is. If the nation doesn’t matter in any meaningful way, then it’s easy to take the Agent Kochinski position—say what you will of America’s occupation of Afghanistan but it was ostensibly illegal to throw acid in a woman’s face. Girls could get a higher education. If you’re fighting for a set of principles that transcend nationality, if the nation is ultimately a pointless entity that deserves scorn, then it’s hard to see how the occupation of Afghanistan is significantly worse than Taliban control.
>But Americans will bomb villages indiscriminately, that’s bad too.
Undeniably, but do you believe that having the nation governed by Islamic fundamentalists is better in a meaningful sense? Is it better to passively accept rule by reactionaries then fight back?
>The people of Afghanistan should fight to liberate themselves.
Do you think it’d be less bloody if they do it? Why is that? Could it be they have some kind of, what’s the word… national affinity? The fact they live there would mean the results would be better? One could argue just as much that a civil war would be worse than a foreign occupation—in the former, the people who’d be maintaining infrastructure and growing food would be doing the fighting and dying. At least in the latter the occupier, assuming they aren’t the Nazis, can maintain some distance from the bloody tribal struggles and supplement infrastructure and food with their own.
>”But it’s about their dignity as a people.”
But I thought nations were artificial constructions that don’t matter? Certainly then only the results matter, not who accomplishes them. If the dignity of the people matter, then did the USSR betray Socialism when it imposed it via the conquest of Eastern European states?

>”Well that’s diffeeent”
Why? Because they imposed Socialism via conquest rather than liberalism? Okay so where’s the line get drawn? A liberal state conquering a theocratic one and imposing liberalism is bad, but a socialist state conquering an ostensibly liberal one like Czechoslovakia is good? Should Socialists rally to Ukraine, given it’s a conservative oligarchic state conquering an ostensibly liberal state?

>”Well that’s different, because it’s a NATO proxy war”
So it’s just arbitrary opposition to America, then?
>”Its not arbitrary, it’s realpolitick”
If we can practice realpolitick in this case, then why stick to some anti-national principle when it’s obvious it doesn’t work?

Seriously if you take this seriously and follow it to its conclusion you’ll go insane. It’s nationalism for periphery nations and universalism for western ones. At least a nationalist can understand “well I wouldn’t like it if someone invaded my country, so I can understand why they don’t want us to invade their country.” As a communist it often feels like you’re expected to express outrage when your nation invades another, all while praying for the shells to fall on your home and your neighbors’ home. You’re expected to abandon your nation in favor of “universal humanity” while rallying to people who are nationalists in their own right.

I’ve talked to my Black friends and my White friends about Communism, the White ones can get behind it up until the “rooting for other countries” part. The Black ones give me some mix of “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” or “communism doesn’t work.” Then I go into Leftist spaces and I hear how my kind are hopeless. That we need to focus on the people who can be reached, Black and Brown and LGBT Americans. Do you know how fucking frustrating that is? To dedicate time and energy into trying to organize people, to pushback against propaganda, to attend protests with a bunch of other white faces, only to hear “Your people are hopeless, it’s the guys that keep saying Communism doesn’t work that we have to win over.”

Shit if you want to be really fucking pedantic, imagine donating time to the Bernie Sanders campaign only to watch as a bunch of Black voices come out against him—he’s not “good” on reparations. Well we got Biden instead, so much better, eh? Thank God for Black Churches and the solid south! Now we’ve got a genocide in Gaza, and who gets blamed for arming Israel? Americans. Of course, we’re excluding Black Americans from that label; it’s people like me’s fault apparently.

I’m frustrated and I’m venting. Apologies. But it seems to me that this is less a political movement trying to affect real change in the world, and more a kind of secular millenarianism preparing for some judgement day where “the West” pays for its crimes as Legions arise from the nations of the dispossessed to enact some kind of cosmic justice. I just don’t see much in it for a grocery clerk with too many traits putting him in “the mainstream.”

I genuinely think CPUSA anon has regressed towards idealism and chauvinism tbh

>>1846132
>Destroy the “nation”
>Can’t figure out why America invading and slaughtering Afghan proles and peasants was opposed by the Left without appeals to nationalism
>Refers to “White” people as “My kind”
>”Nationalism for peripheral nations, universalism for western ones”
>Psyoped himself into thinking communists believe random Americans fund Israel because embracing nationalism implies necessarily seeing himself and the state as a unified entity while denying that they are
>Literally get rejected for promoting socialism both to white and black people but take particular exception to black people rejecting you with very typical liberal claptrap while implicitly accepting the white people rejecting international solidarity (i.e. chauvinism is more acceptable than just the lack of a political education)
>Be furious that the black bourgeois class moves as a bloc like the entire rest of the bourgeoisie
<Unironically thinking darkies are why you didn’t get Sanders
Do you seriously not get why posters here say it mostly sounds like you’re just walking yourself towards fascism and little else?
You don’t talk like a heterodox leftist mate, you talk like ᴉuᴉlossnW c.a. 1918, like the post I’m replying to is laden with racial and national chauvinism

In regards to people cheering on their country being invaded while shilling for Third World groups and militants that aren’t even socialists, you ever considered just taking a stance against multipolaristards, campists, and Turd Worldists like I do, instead of, idk, reading fucking Oswald Mosley to see if his ideas held merit?

Also, note, I, SASUKE-KUN shall now be BERSERK POSTER

And I will mostly post Griffith, because he’s pretty

watch this
>>1844622

People keep explaining this and you aren't listening you just want to argue. Nationalism has a material basis if you want to know more read the book by Stalin that was already linked. Nations specifically emerged during the urbanization of early industrial capitalism as the division between people began to blur. Theres actually an interesting conversation to be had about the difference between civilization states and the westphalian model but your too busy arguing against the foundation of theory without even knowing it in the first place to take part.

You are basically just doing the thing where liberals reduce capitalism to trade and then say its human nature and has always existed, or reduce racism to personal prejudice and so its human nature and has always existed, or in this case reduce nationalism and tribalism to in group preferences and so its human nature and has always existed. Different things at different times have different material conditions and they are not the same. Its not idealism to say that these things emerge from concrete relations between actual people, in fact its idealism to think you can overcome them by simply pointing out that they are socially constructed. Instead of demanding that people do your homework for you so you can nitpick every word line by line go open a book.

>>1846132
>different cultures/economic/social systems being arbitrarily forced into a single political entity.
This presumes cultures/economic/social systems are static and somehow inherently tied to a specific group of humans. Modern nations where differing cultures are put together can break down but all it take is a few generations and it can merge together into a new culture.
All modern nations are mixes of old nations and cultures. Germany started as bunch of separate tribes who became separate kingdoms and didn't become a single "nation" until the 1870s. If your idea of a nation was true then why aren't the descendants of the Goths fighting a war of secession from Germany?
>If the nation doesn’t matter in any meaningful way
Of course it does matters, just like Monarchies mattered and Slave Empires mattered in the past. But ultimately they are temporary social organizations that have largely fallen out of favor. Same will happen for the nation.
>If you’re fighting for a set of principles that transcend nationality, if the nation is ultimately a pointless entity that deserves scorn, then it’s hard to see how the occupation of Afghanistan is significantly worse than Taliban control.
I'm not against invasions for getting rid of reactionaries, the problem was capitalist America's "principles" are based in exploitation and they were basically just using Afghanistan for drug markets. Sure, giving women education and such was good but was mostly PR for America. Soviet support for the Communist in Afghanistan was fine the problem then was America funding the Mujahideen
>then did the USSR betray Socialism when it imposed it via the conquest of Eastern European states?
If anything they didn't go far enough and the traditional ML position with the National Question was misguided given the results. Their encouraging of local cultures, languages and nations was a mistake. The USSR should have worked on actively integrating together on every level: linguistically, culturally, socially, politically and economically. This would have prevented the nationalist resurgence during the 90s.
This isn't some new idea either, just look at America. It forced the English language on it's population and forced immigrants to have the same culture as their host nation for several decades. That's how you end up with the merging of "white" people despite being different European ethnic groups. Problem is they stopped at the newly merged white identity because of it history with slavery. American ruling class has been trying to switch to a "Liberal multiculturalism" to coordinate it's people but look how well that's turning out.
>You’re expected to abandon your nation in favor of “universal humanity” while rallying to people who are nationalists in their own right.
I see where they are coming from because America is the imperial hegemon conquering the world but you are right to see something off. They are just falling back on old nationalism as a defense. It's not a way to go forward, but it is a good defense against a larger country trying to take over because of tighter coordination.

When it comes to Black Americans vs White Americans, that's just a division tactic against the working class. The problem is that the cultures haven't merged, it's stuck in the past because the American State wants division between the working class. It's difficult to force a merger from below when the ruling class wants "Separate but Equal" multiculturalism, not a mass workers movement that can rise against them.

Sakaists just take this short sighted nationalism and then take it to it's separatist conclusions. Instead of working to overcome those cultural differences it's trying to break the workers into smaller ineffective pieces. This is a destructive tendency that needs to be rooted out.

>>1846388
<If anything they didn't go far enough and the traditional ML position with the National Question was misguided given the results. Their encouraging of local cultures, languages and nations was a mistake. The USSR should have worked on actively integrating together on every level: linguistically, culturally, socially, politically and economically. This would have prevented the nationalist resurgence during the 90s.
<This isn't some new idea either, just look at America. It forced the English language on it's population and forced immigrants to have the same culture as their host nation for several decades. That's how you end up with the merging of "white" people despite being different European ethnic groups. Problem is they stopped at the newly merged white identity because of it history with slavery. American ruling class has been trying to switch to a "Liberal multiculturalism" to coordinate it's people but look how well that's turning out.

>Reject Nationalism
>"Look at assimilationist policies in the U.S., they worked!"
>"People having their identities subsumed into a new national identity proves why we don't need nationalism."
Are you arguing the Eastern Bloc should've been forcibly Russified? In which case you'd have a huge uprising in the non-Russian parts of it. Or are you arguing that they should, what, learn Esperanto and gradually phase out their native languages and customs? In which case you'd have discontent in huge portions of the former USSR.

I mean for fuck's sake, I'm almost 30 and work full time, I'm not gonna have some shitty con-lang imposed on me because the language and culture I was raised in is "bad".

<I see where they are coming from because America is the imperial hegemon conquering the world but you are right to see something off. They are just falling back on old nationalism as a defense. It's not a way to go forward, but it is a good defense against a larger country trying to take over because of tighter coordination.

Ding-ding-ding-ding! You've discovered the secret to nationalist success and why internationalism will constantly run into the wall. When facing a unified class enemy with lots of resources you want a tightly organized group. How do you get that? Nationalism.

But for some reason Western Leftists bizarrely think that it's better, when facing an enemy with near-limitless resources compared to yours, to have a group that's 100 guys spread out over 100 countries speaking 100 different languages and dealing with 100 separate circumstances. It's vitally important that you build international ties that amount to nothing more than geopolitical penpals. Guys! Guys! The Chinese just sent us a gift basket with some towels in it! The revolution will be victorious! For however much rhetoric about how every single one of your countrymen deserves to die alienates people, you'll hopefully get one Afghan Maoist out of a party of a dozen people thinking: "Huh, I guess some of those guys are alright."

>>1846569
>>"Look at assimilationist policies in the U.S., they worked!"
It did for European ethnic groups. For a while anyway. As I said they started leaning into liberal Multiculturalism and that has fractured so of the success.
>>"People having their identities subsumed into a new national identity proves why we don't need nationalism."
You make a nation big enough it's covers more and more of humanity overcoming coordination problems of small groups. Bigger nations>Smaller nations. China is a perfect example of this working.
> In which case you'd have a huge uprising in the non-Russian parts of it.
Is teaching people a new language and basic cultural practices on top of their old one that scary? They are part of the same Union already! Also, actively aiming for integration means giving incentives to move forward not just outlawing old culture. Plus it doesn't need to be only one way. English is a mixture of Germanic, Latin and French plus a random amount of other languages. Why can't Russian also adapt and absorb?
>Or are you arguing that they should, what, learn Esperanto
No.
>gradually phase out their native languages
It would happen just be linguistic drift anyway. Might as well direct it towards a common lingua franca
>customs
Yes .fyi the "socialist kiss" was an real life example of the process already. Obviously you just keep adding other cultural practices to increase understanding, commonality and coordination
>I'm almost 30 and work full time
The whole point of learning a lingua franca is to open up opportunity for the future and increase your social reach. You already speak English which is already the lingua franca of many countries. As to the future don't know the details but I imagine there will be a few regional lingua franca that eventually merge. I'm just saying this process is good for workers mass movements
> the language and culture I was raised in is "bad".
You really took Sakaists to heart despite complaining about them. I never ascribed moral goodness or badness to a language or culture itself. When Ive been using such language I meant in a effectiveness sense.The impracticality of having hundreds of thousands of small little cultural and language groups and destroying effective coordination all because of retarded post-colonialist ethno-nationalist idealism.
>want a tightly organized group. How do you get that? Nationalism
Sure. But it's limited and to win we need to go beyond it. MLs effectively support a limited nationalism but I'm saying we should be aiming long term for something more. Nationalism help with immediate coordination but it's too small to win against capitalism. Stopping at nationalism is the recipe for long term failure.
>For however much rhetoric about how every single one of your countrymen deserves to die alienates people
You are right but I get where they are coming from. If a nation is imperialist then you don't want it to succeed at selfish imperialism. The problem is that they stop their analysis at the national or ethnic level. And you are actually agreeing with their premises but just taking it to differing conclusions. The underlining premises of nationalism/ethnicity being essential to humanity is wrong. It should be seen as an coordination method that has limits and should be moved on from eventually.

>>1846791
Here’s the issue with what you’re saying: minorities don’t want it. At least not the reality of it. I believe we’ve grown accustomed to thinking of Socialism and race or nation as such a one-sided thing that the actual reality of this integrated society is lost on some advocates that it appears as all take (from the majority) and no give (from the minority).

Let’s take a moment to consider the numbers: the vast majority of America is White. Despite the fears of racists that intermingling with Blacks would “muddy” or “defile” Whites, the reality is within a generation or two—especially if the population is dispersed among the wider White populace—the category of people we call “African-American” would functionally cease to exist. Each successive generation would look Whiter than the last, until functionally they’d be indistinguishable from White people. And while an element from African-American culture would remain as linguistic quirks or naming or food, the majority of it would likely be influenced by White culture. Consider for example what happened after Rome went Christian—sure elements of the old Pagan faith sneaked themselves into the new one, Christmas replacing Yule, Saints replacing gods—Christianity still asserted itself and the Pagan faiths went extinct. Even the modern incarnations are just reconstructions based off limited knowledge and influenced by the Christian ethos, it can never be the genuine article. Even if we formally abolish Whiteness by assimilating it’s antithesis—Blackness—it will still take the characteristics of the majority culture, the “victor” of the dialectical conflict. White America didn’t become more Italian, Italians just became more White.

So we abandon present national divisions, we incorporate all the present races and cultures into a new national unity in America at least, well consider the pride Black America has for their cultural achievements—their innovations in music and the arts, their contributions our culinary dishes and fashion; there’s plenty of anger when they see Whites “move in” to black fields, whether it be White musicians adopting Black innovations or something as silly as hairstyle. When it comes to it, would they honestly be willing to surrender that national consciousness of theirs to the collective? If they earnestly saw their destiny being the same as the Roman Britons, to be subsumed into a new national reality and disappear from the world, would they accept it? Personally I have my doubts. I imagine even many Black Marxists would reject it, imagining the ideal solution would be, if not an independent Black nation, then a situation similar to the U.K. Where you have a separate Scottish Parliament, then a general Parliament that’s dominated by the English without being explicitly for the English. Again: universalism for the majority, particularism for the minority. They want resources from the majority, sure, but they don’t want those resources to come with actual people. It’s how we’ve gone from fights against segregation in the 60s, to the emergence of “BIPOC spaces” in modernity. The simple reality is that for Black America to be truly integrated in a meaningful way, to destroy the distinction between “Black” and “White” America, will mean its absorption into a greater whole. They’d lose themselves. Hence things like the “Progressive Stack” you’ll see emerge from some organizers. A black voice on its own will be drowned out by the indisputable reality that it’s a minority. Not even out of any active malevolence on the majority’s part, it’s just nature. Thus in order to preserve themselves they rebuild the walls originally intended to keep them out in order to keep themselves in. They’ll set aside spaces for themselves alone and ask others not to enter.

And it isn’t like this is applied across the board. I don’t know any Leftist that would argue the Boers deserve special autonomous enclaves or some means of “preserving” themselves. Plenty would happily sing “Kill the Boer” given the chance:

Thus this isn’t any true end to the national dialectic but an inversion of it. Whereas the colonizer would argue he’s “civilizing” the colonized (eg remaking him in the colonizer’s image) the colonized now demands his former colonizer reflect him, but it’s a reflection, not actually becoming him. They’ll portray Alexander Hamilton as a black man but assert the centrality of Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X as black men.

It’s Christianity but without the Apostle Paul. Stubbornly clinging to its Jewish character in order to retain its followers identities. It’s a dead end, destined to meet the same fate as the Jews in Masada. They see it as an affront to their dignity to be absorbed by their captors, so they’d rather go down swinging. If, for example, the reservation system were to end and Native Americans were to spread out and be fully integrated into every facet of American social and economic life, that would be the end of them. All that would be left is a bunch of otherwise indistinguishable White people claiming 1/34th Cherokee ancestry. Give them a choice between expanding their reservations lands and stimulating it with ton of investment or being absorbed by the Nation, free to go where they wish, live where they wish, and be treated as a completely equal member of the nation and they’ll almost certainly pick the former.

Sheer numbers alone make a true inversion where colonizer and colonized switch places impossible. The colonized have made their status as colonized intrinsic to their identity—they certainly identify with their race more openly then White people—but since an actual reversal of roles is impossible (unlike in Palestine) all you have left is this game of resentment and anger directed at the colonizer, and a feverish imagination that one day you’ll see a great decolonization where somehow, miraculously, their people emerge unchanged and independent.

It’s not gonna happen. So instead they’ll keep proposing the impossible and use it as evidence of the lack of virtue in the colonizer, that a hundred people won’t comport to the ways of ten.

simply watch this
>>1844622

>>1847160
>minorities don’t want it.
Individuals will abandon identity groups if given enough pressure, both positive and negative. There will be some hardliners but they will fall by the wayside if actively pushed.
>Christianity still asserted itself and the Pagan faiths went extinct.
Sure, The new Christianity that emerged gave enough into the pagan side to appease the people Perfect historical example of the process working.
>White America didn’t become more Italian, Italians just became more White.
Exactly.
>well consider the pride Black America has for their cultural achievements—their innovations in music and the arts, their contributions our culinary dishes and fashion
This group pride is just the individual being proud of what someone else did and associating it with themselves. At that point why not be proud of American accomplishments? Why not go even larger and be proud of humanities' accomplishments? Why limit it to a small group except you were always told to limit it to a small group?
>to be subsumed into a new national reality and disappear from the world,
But they don't disappear. They still exist and are there. No one is dead they just expanded the group that they associate with.
>fights against segregation in the 60s, to the emergence of “BIPOC spaces” in modernity.
Again that because post-colonialism/multiculturalism is actually ethno-nationalism with lib talking points. Again, the formation of those ethnic groups in the first place proves how flexible they are. We can just remake those identities in the short term and get rid of them in the future.
> they’d rather go down swinging.
Give enough incentives and most will switch sides. Only a small amount will cling to the old identity. We can just ignore the non-violent ones.
>that would be the end of them.
They are not dead though they as individuals still exist. They just changed how they viewed themselves.
>Give them a choice between expanding their reservations lands and stimulating it with ton of investment
This hypothetical forgets humanity shares the one world and we couldn't actually do this for every single ethnic group in existence considering every single ethnic group also can clam every single part of the planet depending on how far back you go.
>all you have left is this game of resentment and anger directed at the colonizer
Colonization is intrinsically exploitative. Socialist brotherhood doesn't steal resources or labor for the benefit for one ethnic group/nation. Communism is about the abolition of property so these relations will not exist. Liberal post-colonialism theory forgets about communism that's why they keep on falling back to ethno-nationalism.

>>1847160
>>1847184
The problem is that you both, being white leftists most likely, gravitate towards treating black people like objects rather than subjects. You speak as though neither of you have ever known a black person, nor see Africans as people. To speak of whether black people will be “segregated” or whether our identity will be subsumed into whiteness and our culture be fully assimilated and destroyed by settler culture; this is why the POC CPUSA anon has grown to loath automatically reject him, because many white leftists see black people as objects rather than as people, and blackness as something to be assimilated into whiteness. Black people are instruments to you, an identity to be instrumentalized, no different from your liberal forebears that discussed whether black people should be sent to Africa or if their culture could simply be annihilated here in the United States over a century ago.
Black people will be the ones to abolish blackness, not white vanguardists that say assimilate to American culture or die, functionally the same as Hitlerites with this shit. I hate how white this board is man.
>No anon, you shouldn’t be offended you idpoler!
Note, I’m pushing back for the same reason workers generally push back against MLs, you speak of us like objects, you speak of what decisions you want to make over people’s lives on their behalf, not a single word of how to help people gain power over their own lives.

Tribalism and ethnocentrism aren’t synonymous, the very concept of the nation-state inherently requires the capacity for people to organize outside of tribalism, class society has essentially always transcended tribalism as its almost inherently imperialist and brings together many communities to bow to a single ruling class, and people preferring their own culture doesn’t lead to war, conquest, slavery, and genocide without a state and ruling class leading the way.

>>1847337
>gravitate towards treating black people like objects rather than subjects.
All homo sapiens are material objects. While that doesn't mean our subjective experience isn't valuable, the real material results of our action are measurable. All current identities have barely been in existence a few hundred years and treating them as sacred is not a good way of understanding our collective position in the universe.
>subsumed into whiteness
No, that's the colonialist position. Whiteness and blackness (really all racial identities) should be subsumed into a new universal identity. Ethno-nationalists oppose that and cause socialist movements to fail.
>our culture
All cultures should be transformed in order to achieve communism, why should your particular culture be exempt?
> an identity to be instrumentalized
Yes. But I've said the same for Russian, Chinese, American. throughout the discustion I've treid to included all ethnic groups and nations.
>no different from your liberal forebears
It's true some Liberals want a racially blind capitalism but other factions have the idea that "Separate but Equal" multiculturalism will be better. While I agree with reducing and eventually eliminating ethnic/national identities it's the Communism that makes it different.
>Black people will be the ones to abolish blackness
We have the same agenda but I don't think one group, ethnicity, nation, race can do it alone.
>that say assimilate to American culture or die
That was just a historical example. American culture will have to be transformed and merged with other cultures too.
>you speak of us like objects
It's not just your group, we are all part of material reality. People want to believe they are above it all but then reality hits them like a train. I trying to speak as objectively as possible to better get a handle on the situation. I would sugar coat it better in real life.
>you speak of what decisions you want to make over people’s lives on their behalf
That's because MLs believe there are objective steps workers have to take in order to overthrow capitalism. Why would they just let mislead workers derail the way forward? Why should they?
>not a single word of how to help people gain power over their own lives.
I'm still learning myself. But I'm convinced that ML is the closest we ever got to having a method. But they made mistakes in the USSR that lead to it's downfall. We need to understand it and I believe reformulating the National Question is an important key. Otherwise workers will ultimately achieve nothing due to nationalist/ethnic infighting and stay under the control of the Bourgeoisie.

>>1847485
>The only quote he doesn't mine is the one where I stated
<Black people will be the ones to abolish blackness
Everything else you posted is exactly why MLs are essentially eternally doomed to failure, because the only people that will listen to you speak of using them as instruments and deciding what's best for them and still following you are essentially peasants (and even then, MLs had to brutalize peasants frequently to make them agreeable) and other MLs

You have nothing to say to working people because you do not listen to us, because the last thing you have for proles is respect.

After an entire meandering reply, you failed to miss my point that black people should and will abolish the idea of being "black" because the identity of blackness is meant to stand opposed to the reality of personhood. Proles tune out people like you because you frequently make it clear that you view us as a big horsey you can ride to power, not a class you are a part of that you want to help liberate.

For instance, we both want to essentially abolish race and in this context the black identity, but you want to so you can utilize black people for your own political ends, the main problem with "blackness" is diversity, at least that's the vibe I get, this diversity prevents you from instrumentalizing people the way you want to. I want to abolish blackness because I am a person, not a "black" person.

pointless

>>1847502
> MLs are essentially eternally doomed to failure
Every single Communist party in power more than a few years was ML. China, the second most powerful country in the world is controlled by an ML party. They have raised hundreds of millions from poverty and have raised the standards of living for hundreds of millions more. You are right that ML parties are not at their historic height but they are more successful than any other leftist polity
>because the only people that will listen to you speak of using them as instruments and deciding what's best for them and still following you are essentially peasants
So you don't like MLs because they try to be direct and don't blow smoke up everyone's ass? Instead you want the proles to listen to sweat nothings and accomplish nothing.
>because the last thing you have for proles is respect.
Respect is not given, it is earned. Maybe my fellows should earn respect by working together and getting rid of the bourgeoisie. If only there was some way to get them to coordinate…
>identity of blackness is meant to stand opposed to the reality of personhood.
I agree. All racial categories do the same thing. But how does one group do it alone if the other groups just reimpose those categories?
>but you want to so you can utilize black people for your own political ends
So let's say you get your way and are now free from racial categories. Do you still want to be the capitalists' bitch or not?
>not a class you are a part of that you want to help liberate.
Wrong, we're trapped together and I want liberation from capitalism. Do you?
>diversity prevents you from instrumentalizing people the way you want to
Yeah, Worker infighting stops them from fighting their common enemy so I want to stop it. Why is this a problem? Your strange attitude stops proles who come from different backgrounds or have different mindsets from coordinating together to accomplish common goals.

>>1847764
>Every single Communist party in power more than a few years was ML
Yes, that's because they were capitalist. Material relations are more important than your reactionary love for half-forgotten Protestant capitalist pieties and the red paint you've been huffing.
Kys for piety.

>>1847452
Makes you think. Maybe this ethnic nationalism is not so natural after all.

>>1847764
I wrote a lot and it all got deleted, so I'll keep this brief and stay to the point.
The problem is that you come off as a disingenuous, false ally, and many white leftists do.
For you, racial oppression is not an issue in itself worth combating and abolishing, what's worth combating and abolishing is capitalism and the ways that racism upholds it. Which ironically leads to things like the CPUSA, even when it finally did embrace anti-racism as part of its party platform, still ultimately doing less for black proles than the Civil Rights Movement did.
I think the entire framing of many white MLs, especially the denizens of this board, surrounding racism and racial hierarchies is intellectually dishonest and opportunistic. For instance, framing racism and anti-racism as "divisive" is intellectually dishonest; anti-racism is obviously only actually divisive towards racists, and white supremacy as a hierarchy is not divisive as a "two way street" the way you're acting, there isn't "both sides" on this issue, racism doesn't divide racially marginalized people against white people and vice-versa, it purely turns white people against racially marginalized people. It wasn't black workers refusing to unionize with white workers. It wasn't black workers refusing to work with white leftists. It wasn't black workers refusing to participate in political actions with white workers.
So that's why you're getting the response you're getting, because you come off as insincere in downplaying racial oppression and seemingly not actually caring about abolishing it, you come off as intellectually dishonest in framing the discussion as if there's this huge influential contingent of black workers actively refusing to ally with white workers when, in reality, white proles have historically and into the contemporary period refused solidarity with both non-whites and by extension communists in favor of the short term marginal benefits of white supremacy and citizenship over the long term absolute benefit of socialism, and you come off as generally untrustworthy once people combine the first two points with the fact that you are ultimately proposing to people a new overriding command structure you will hypothetically administer for "everyone's" benefit (it's telling to many that MLs almost never mention the notion of a "free association of producers" and actively downplay the libertarian aspects of Marx's outlook)

To sum up why it's extremely hard to trust many white MLs, well, just take the greater exception taken to me criticizing MLs over CPUSA anon embracing nationalism and even a bit of racial chauvinism. It says very clearly where your priorities are and the sort of ally you are to black proles and workers in general.

>>1847788
>ally
What the fuck is that liberal shit. Kys for nationalism

>>1847795
Basically, white leftists, especially the ones on this board, do not actually want to eliminate racism, they actively marginalize black proles and black leftists, actively downplay the harm racism does, and are so insidious as to frame anti-racism itself as "liberal", because ultimately, many white leftists are deeply entitled, ultimately unwilling to dismantle racial oppression itself, unwilling to genuinely detach themselves from their identity as "white people", and unwilling to actually alienate their racist peers

At the end of the day, if you ask the people on leftypol, leftists in general should not dismantle racism, racism itself only exists when blacks take political activity against it, and black leftists themselves should accept racial discrimination otherwise they are "liberals".

Basically, your greatest fear is alienating /pol/ over alienating black workers, black leftists fight against racism and capitalism, most of the white MLs here only "fight" (post) against capitalism and actively reject anti-racism

>>1847802
>dismantle racism
Actually, you should kys for sentimentalism and moral whining, no matter what else you think.

>>1847802
>Basically, white leftists, especially the ones on this board,
Okay so leave.
Nothing is keeping you here and I pretty sure nobody will miss your schizo racialised worldview.
Bye, I hope you find more enjoyment wherever you end up.

>>1847823
Lmao I have absolutely no racialized worldview, like many MLs, you just can't handle being criticized, held to any standard beyond "Well I have good ideas", get furious whenever a token dares not pat you on the head for being a communist and doing nothing else of worth, feel entitled to respect and being listened to, act as if workers owe you something, and think it's encumbant on black proles not to offend racists.

You took more exception to me daring to do anything but kiss your strategically useless ass over CPUSA anon openly stating he no longer considers himself to be a Marxist or leftist because leftists want to "destroy his nation" and hate his race; really sums up the attitude of most white MLs in the West honestly

>>1844886
agreed, good points anon

>>1847829
>Lmao I have absolutely no racialized worldview,
Reading your incessant whining thats clearly a lie.
>like many MLs
Not an ML. Like many autistics you don't sem to understand how anonymous image boards work.
Go and do something else, something normal, you don't have to be this way.

>>1847829
>but kiss your strategically useless ass over CPUSA anon openly stating he no longer considers himself to be a Marxist or leftist because leftists want to "destroy his nation" and hate his race;

Spreading lies and misinformation about CPUSA anon while he is at work and when he is not around. Not cool bro.

>>1847829
Okay I was with you until you started making shit up about one of the handful of decent effortposters on here, dude has openly stated he's still a leftist/socialist

>>1847858
Being an effort poster =/= decent
CPUSA anon has basically been reiterating the philosophical ideas and gibberish of Oswald Mosley for literal months, clearly becoming more and more infatuated with fascist philosophy, most evident in the fact that the dude has devolved to basically consistently arguing leftists are weak soycucks pushing away the masses by rejecting nationalism

But of course since he doesn't speak ill of MLs specifically that's something you're completely blind to, I swear people like you would welcome praise from neo-nazis
>Dude has openly stated he's a leftist/socialist
<"I’m frustrated and I’m venting. Apologies. But it seems to me that this is less a political movement trying to affect real change in the world, and more a kind of secular millenarianism preparing for some judgement day where “the West” pays for its crimes as Legions arise from the nations of the dispossessed to enact some kind of cosmic justice. I just don’t see much in it for a grocery clerk with too many traits putting him in “the mainstream.”"

>>1847829
>>1847802
taking it a bit too far here anon. this board as a whole is bad on a lot of things, thats because its an anonymous imageboard thats as much about commie themed shitposting & funny pictures as it is about real discussion & analysis. thats the whole deal. part of the etiquette in that is if you want to make real critiques of what someones saying you should focus on what theyre actually saying, and it doesnt make sense to equivocate CPUSAnons views with the general board culture, especially considering how much he diverges from it

i agree with you that CPUSAnons assessments of the history and nature of fascism and his critique of the left have veered far off materialist analysis, that is a good and fair point. i disagree with his apologism for patriotism and conservatism, but it is a qualified apologism that clearly comes from both sympathy for "normal people" and frustration with an american left that DOES have problems with excessive condemnation of anyone who has any sentimental views about the mythology of the US, which is realistically going to encompass a huge portion of the american poor & working class. i encounter this regularly in organizing, and in vast majority of minor instances i either hold my tongue or try to politely ask good faith questions e.g. "this isnt what america is about!" In reference to injustice, -> "then what is america about?" and go from there.

i am very critical of such "patriotism" and think its a much more negative thing while CPUSAnon seems to believe it is or has the potential to be neutral, and i can sympathize with that knowing how often it comes up. i disagree with CPUSAnon plenty, including about the role of patriotism, the significance of white supremacy in the US, and in identifying the "weakness" of the american left (which i attribute far more to historical repression and internal strategic failures than cultural elements). But i do not think he is a chauvinist at all, i think he recognizes and sympathizes with the desire for people to be part of a larger meaningful project, and sees the way that can manifest in people being basically friendly and supportive of eachother, and because he is american he sees this among americans. again, i think sentimentalizing of american mythology can basically never be redeemed, but i dont think relatively minor disagreements on that while agreeing on basically everything else that matters is grounds for condemnation

CPUSAnon if on your substack writings or on here you at least just qualified a bit more about the relative significance of cultural analysis of fascism as opposed to materialist analysis of fascism, i think that would benefit your writing & theory even without consideration of it getting ahead of critiques, and i do think it is an entirely fair critique to say you have to put enough emphasis on explaining your view of how your cultural analysis fits into historical materialism.

>>1847957
>you had a bad take therefore you are a red-brown ML

And you've lost me. You're acting like the tryhard MLs you criticize.

You want the left to get its shit together? stop engaging in bad faith

>>1847957
That's not what CPUSA Anon is saying. He's saying the only shared identity Americans have is being American. And when communist say down with amerikkka in less you've had a basic history lesson outside of the public school system. You're going to see that as an attack on you as an American. He talking about using tactics of nationalist to build a coalition that doesn't alienate the average burger. And agree as one of CPUSA anons biggest critics. Dude is a papist but if anyone is familiar with community building it's a catholic. The American left needs a post-colonialism identity, a post colonial nation. A new national identity that Americans as a cultural ethnic group will live in.

>>1847776
<USSR gets rid of capitalists, moves away form markets and towards central planing based on the votes of the soviets. They fund communist movements around the world, moving the world closer to communism than ever before.
<Nazis directly attack it while Nationalists and liberal wannabe kulaks sabotage the project internally with help from external Capitalist imperial powers and after several decades succeed.
>Idealist blames the MLs for not throwing the communism switch fast enough.
I have my own criticisms of MLs but the idea the entire project was only the MLs throwing around some superficial "red paint" on top of capitalism does not reflect historical reality.

>>1847788
>false ally
Bro, we are fellow workers. I don't go for the Lib line of American minorities being some magical creatures I have to be subservient to.
>racial oppression is not an issue in itself worth combating
We can't win without getting rid of racism so I consider it a number one priority. Again it's lib moralism thinking my motivations need to be "pure" in order achieve some goal.
>racism doesn't divide racially marginalized people against white people
People can be racist against whites or particular European ethnic groups. Roma are treated like shit all throughout Europe and Poles are like dirt in the UK
>It wasn't black workers refusing to unionize with white workers. It wasn't black workers refusing to work with white leftists. It wasn't black workers refusing to participate in political actions with white workers.
You are right and I want to eliminate that.
>as if there's this huge influential contingent of black workers actively refusing to ally with white workers
It might not be huge, but there is a influential contingent of Sakaist types who are constantly throwing dirt at attempts to mend the divide between white workers and other racial groups of workers. Their embrace of ethno-nationalism under the guise of anti-colonialism is a real undercurrent in leftist circles constantly stirring up division and it needs to be addressed. White nationalism is constantly addressed within the left but not other ethno-nationalisms. I understand there are real historical reasons for that as White-Nationalism is more powerful. But the nationalist project itself is the problem.
>new overriding command structure you will hypothetically administer for "everyone's" benefit
I also believe there are problems with ML and it is not perfect. Having a healthy back and forth is good but workers can't be constantly changing their minds on every single move so you need some policy like democratic centralism to move onto new issues. Also sometimes certain subjects need to be addressed by specialists and you can't just do some vote from the general public.
>actively downplay the libertarian aspects of Marx's outlook
That's true, but it's only because capitalists started playing hardball. Genocides, mass murders, use of WMDs, etc have changed the game.

>>1847802
I'm perfectly fine with getting rid of White Identity and white racism but we'll need a strong state in order to pull it off. But what can we do if every leftist in the west is constantly whining about MLs and fighting tooth and nail against the establishment of a powerful state that would fix the issues? It's the libertarian socialist's Catch 22.

>>1848086
>A new national identity that Americans as a cultural ethnic group will live in.
Well, you see this dismissal a lot in people saying Americans don't have a culture or things like that. But the U.S. is a nation with its own kind of cultural "language" and traditions (and I'm not referring to the English language, which happens to be the most commonly spoken language in the U.S.). You can see the Soviet Union figure this out in the 1980s when Vladimir Posner became a top Soviet spokesperson on American television in part because he grew up in the U.S., spoke English in an American accent, and could take a Soviet position on things while speaking in the same cultural "language" of Americans, which freaked people out at the time, and he didn't fit the stereotypes of a fat, poorly-dressed Soviet party apparatchik saying "ze party has told us to do this." But that also caused the ratings to go up which is why the American networks liked to have him on. You see him come in around 40:00.

>i encounter this regularly in organizing, and in vast majority of minor instances i either hold my tongue or try to politely ask good faith questions e.g. "this isnt what america is about!" In reference to injustice, -> "then what is america about?" and go from there.
This is one reason why I think MLK was brilliant as a strategist. Like it wasn't just because the civil rights movement flew American flags or whatever, although they did, but because he spoke an American language and flipped that around on the establishment: you say that all men were created equal and this is the land of liberty but I'm asking you to live up to your OWN conception of yourself.

>>1848092
Ancestor worship. Heroic drama. Don't care.
>I'm perfectly fine with getting rid of White Identity and white racism but we'll need a strong state in order to pull it off
And here your conceit that you are some kind of superior decision maker supplies the proof that your interest in the movement is born of private ambition and that you are unfit for any position in the Party. Pack your bags drama queen

>>1847764
>Every single Communist party in power more than a few years was ML.
The two biggest countries where Marxism-Leninism won out was in Russia and China. I think the reading the history about it, I'd like to have imagined myself as being on their side during their revolutions. But it has never been a significant political force where I live: the United States. I have the feeling that if it were ever going to be, it already would've been.

Part of the idea behind it really is a 20th-century version of the French Revolution where there's a general uprising by the masses of people against the ancien regime. These were societies where government had been totally isolated from the people. I don't know if they moved the Tsarist emperor around in a covered carriage so people couldn't see him, but that's how they did it China for a long time. A coup d'etat in Russia was enough to overthrow it. But I think the revolutionary tradition in the United States looks more like the Civil War, which not only involved communists as active combatants but predated Marxism-Leninism (and Lenin himself). It was also less morally ambiguous than a lot of conflicts in human history – and it essentially involved a war between one portion of the people against another.

>>1848092
This anon is right mostly.
OP will cry about it.

>>1846132
>Shit if you want to be really fucking pedantic, imagine donating time to the Bernie Sanders campaign only to watch as a bunch of Black voices come out against him—he’s not “good” on reparations.
Yeah but I think a lot of black voters (especially older ones) really wanted Trump out and thought Biden would be better at beating him. Were they wrong? I dunno. Like I suspect part of it is not even really about "Trump" that much, but the pigskin Trump supporters who are racist assholes and got all lathered up and felt emboldened when Trump got elected and let their racism come out. Our politics is – to tie it back to the OP – kind of tribal like that. I don't know if that's the reason but I don't begrudge black voters for voting for Biden instead of Bernie. They have their reasons, whether rightly or wrongly, which come from their histories and experiences.

I feel it myself. I live around a lot of Trump supporters. You see these guys who drive big pickup trucks with sectarian stickers or symbols on it – when that guy drives aggressively and cuts you off, that's going to make you mad. Every time one of those guys does that to someone, they piss somebody off. That adds a little of extra "quantity" that just builds and builds and eventually it's going to come around back on them. When Trump got elected, they became more aggressive. Ultimate American badasses coming through so get the fuck out of the way. Keep honking, I'M RELOADING. That's how a lot of political conflict seems to play out on the ground in America.

>I’m frustrated and I’m venting. Apologies. But it seems to me that this is less a political movement trying to affect real change in the world, and more a kind of secular millenarianism preparing for some judgement day where “the West” pays for its crimes as Legions arise from the nations of the dispossessed to enact some kind of cosmic justice.
Yeah there's a lot of that on the left.

>>1848107
>>Ancestor worship. Heroic drama. Don't care.
What ancestor? And lol at you using a lib trope of applying fictional story analysis to political history.

<Try to work towards a political system that allows for the most effective decisions to be made and implemented so communism can be established.
>Oh that just means you want to be on top. I can read everyone's mind btw
Why do libs need to go to therapy all the time if they have such an innate understanding of psychology? Serious question

>>1848109
Everything should be adapted for the situation. Traditional ML might not to work in America or the EU but to throw out the entire thing doesn't make sense. It achieved the success it did for good reasons and we should learn from it. Any communist movement that comes out of America will have a lot in common with it. Libertarian socialism or Sakaist ethno-nationalism might be more attractive to western leftists currently but they just can't take the pressure.

watch

>>1848151
>Traditional ML might not to work in America or the EU but to throw out the entire thing doesn't make sense. It achieved the success it did for good reasons and we should learn from it.

I agree with this but unfortunately in practice a lot of people agree with this only in sentiment. For example, the insistence on democratic centralism despite being under wildly different conditions from those in which it was developed.

>>1848151
The best things we can learn from ML is not what to do. It was a completely wrongheaded approach to trying to achieve socialism.

>>1847788
>For you, racial oppression is not an issue in itself worth combating and abolishing, what's worth combating and abolishing is capitalism and the ways that racism upholds it
>>1847502
>For instance, we both want to essentially abolish race and in this context the black identity, but you want to so you can utilize black people for your own political ends
Both of these are because the people you are critiquing (correctly) believe racism to be a product of capitalism. That the political ends you suggest people are putting infront of what you say you want are the actually the solutions to that very question.
>>1847802
>Basically, white leftists, especially the ones on this board, do not actually want to eliminate racism, they actively marginalize black proles and black leftists, actively downplay the harm racism does, and are so insidious as to frame anti-racism itself as "liberal"
Do you actually think racism is separate from capitalism, or are you talking about inter-personal prejudice and not systemic race based oppression? It sounds like you actually are a liberal

>>1848181
Democratic centralism as was formulated made it too ridged and the USSR was limited in how it responded to crisis because of it. There needs to be some way to formally veto upper party decisions if a super majority thinks it's wrong, having the possibility of reopening discussion even after an action has been decided and allowing limited factionalism for certain topics. Part of the problem was all those existed de facto under democratic centralism but was de jure not allowed.

>>1848183
>The best things we can learn from ML is not what to do.
It can't be all wrong, otherwise it would have never gotten off the ground at all. It so far has failed at it's ultimate goal of achieving communism but it's too successful to ignore what makes it work.
>It was a completely wrongheaded
What do you think was wrongheaded about it?

>>1848199
I think if racism actually were separate from capitalism, white MLs would almost certainly, immediately drop their largely perfomatibe critique of it

>>1848151
>Everything should be adapted for the situation. Traditional ML might not to work in America or the EU but to throw out the entire thing doesn't make sense.
I'm not sure modern *MLs* have much in common with traditional ML-ism as a theory or practice.

>Libertarian socialism or Sakaist ethno-nationalism might be more attractive to western leftists currently but they just can't take the pressure.
I mean something new might come along. You might say China is a better example because they have an ML party in power, but if I wanted to find people with views and personal outlooks broadly comparable to that of the average CPC cadre then I'd just go to my local county zoning department and talk to the staff there… kind of a contradiction the Western communist boosters of China should probably confront sooner or later. Or keep watching 4'8" political streamers who think the main barrier to communism is insufficient triangulation on the Gender Question… or maybe not.

>>1848235
>white MLs
What about Asian MLs? American liberals always get so caught up in their local culture war they always forget that statistically speaking, MLs are most likely to be Chinese.

>>1848249
> personal outlooks broadly comparable to that of the average CPC cadre then I'd just go to my local county zoning department and talk to the staff there
To be part of the communist party you at least need to memorize and profess the basics even if you don't actually believe it.
On the other hand in, local zoning offices will take anyone who meets their criteria for employment so their outlooks wouldn't be the same.
>Western communist boosters of China should probably confront sooner or later.
Currently the West has been forcing the CPC into becoming more hardline as a response but there is always the looming possibility the communists lose like in the USSR. Only time will tell.

>>1848151
>lib trope of applying fictional story analysis to political history.
Politics is a theater of idealism. The Greeks openly used theatrical metaphors to form their social institutions. Symbols are important. Bourgeois politics is the thing you're supposed to be trying to destroy.
>Try to work towards a political system that allows for the most effective decisions to be made and implemented so communism can be established.
<Pray to Karen, god of managers, for her omniscience and judgment
And this here is exactly why we should put all the middle managers to the wall and their families, too. People who create lies should be raped to death, not celebrated. Why would you think otherwise?

>>1848260 (me)
And here you are creating heroic drama (always a lie) and ancestor worship (lying to yourself about the afterlife) so why would I consider respecting you trying to sell yourself on feats your zoomer fanboy ass never was at?

>>1848235
>I think if racism actually were separate from capitalism

But racism specifically means the top down imposition of post-enlightenment scientific classification into psuedocatagories called "race" for the express purpose of suppressing wages, one of the two costs associated with capitalist production, the other being material inputs which cant be so easily manipulated. Its a tool for the bourgeoisie to reduce costs so they can increase profits. So the way to get rid of that is to abolish private for profit ownership so that race-based discrimination has no material basis. Thats why people call you a liberal when you are trying to fix people being mean to each other on an individual level and why anti-capitalism isn't setting the timetable for anothers freedom but an integral part of achieving it. There isn't an alternative libertarian version of Marx where racism doesn't have a specific material and historical concrete reality intertwined with the development of capitalism, there is only the Marxist view and the liberal view.

>>1844601
>universalism of communism
do you even fucking read the things you talk about

>>1848260
>Symbols are important.
Then why did you say you "Don't care"?
>Bourgeois politics is the thing you're supposed to be trying to destroy.
Killing the bourgeoisie and proletarianizing the Kulaks was a good start. Obviously they needed to go further, it wasn't perfect and that's where my criticism comes in.
><Pray to Karen, god of managers, for her omniscience and judgment
Why do you assume I consider the state omniscient or pray to it? It's a tool to defeat capitalism that will be eventually trashed. Classic ML was ultimately inadequate for the 20th century but it still made great progress that raised hundreds of millions out of poverty.
>we should put all the middle managers to the wall and their families, too
What 's the point? If a worker is unnecessary as middle mangers just put them into different positions.
>People who create lies should be raped to death, not celebrated.
Huh?
>>1848262
>here you are creating heroic drama (always a lie)
Ok, so you're right to an extent. Even though I was talking facts I was shaping them to emphasize the positive aspects. As you said, "Politics is a theater of idealism. The Greeks openly used theatrical metaphors to form their social institutions. Symbols are important." So what's the problem?
>ancestor worship (lying to yourself about the afterlife)
Not sure what you mean about the afterlife or lying to myself.

>>1848259
>What about Asian MLs? American liberals always get so caught up in their local culture war they always forget that statistically speaking, MLs are most likely to be Chinese
Did I say "Asian MLs"?
Is there a day that white western MLs who have never accomplished anything stop trying to steal Valor from other countries?
You aren't Chinese nigha, are you?

>>1848266
Bro, black people organizing for Civil Rights did more to tackle racism in the US than anything the CPUSA did in its entire history, where the fuck do you come off claiming marginalized people's problems cannot be ameliorated without targeting capitalism and actively ignoring racism?

Maybe if you think black communists targeting racial oppression as well as capitalist is a waste of our time, then just go organize alongside your MAGAtard peers and maybe get them even an inch away from the fascist pipeline instead of trying to take over the US socialist movement and continuously lecturing black socialist activists for attacking something you see as ultimately irrelevant to "real struggle" (posting online about how based Comrade Lenin was)

>>1848278
>Did I say "Asian MLs"
No, because bringing them up ruins your attempts of splinting communists along white vs black racial lines. Based on this is there a practical difference between Sakaists and a glowie?
>Is there a day that white western MLs who have never accomplished anything
USSR was created by "white western MLs" and it fell apart because of ethno-nationalism. Weird how you are trying to do the same here…
>steal Valor from other countries?
Oh so your unit of measurement is countries now and not races? Weird how you switch back and forth to make racialist arguments…
>You aren't Chinese nigha, are you?
No, but I always find it funny how the fact that the 100 million Chinese people are communist MLs always makes liberals seethe.

>>1848275
Because *your* symbols aren't important.
>>1848275
>Killing the bourgeoisie and proletarianizing the Kulaks was a good start
Not really; you merely replaced them with some PR snow-job.
>Why do you assume I consider the state omniscient or pray to it
Because you get too much joy out of wielding it and you already fancy yourself as part of its brain.
>It's a tool to defeat capitalism that will be eventually trashed
It's a different tool than it was when you were waving it around 80 years ago, and part of that is indeed due to your own actions. Are you accounting for that, sonny?
>What 's the point?
Their conditioning is defective. It's not that they're unnecessary; it's that they and their thoughts need to be prevented from reproducing, including the idea that they're special.
>Even though I was talking facts I was shaping them to emphasize the positive aspects
And for that I'd have you hanged.
>As you said, "Politics is a theater of idealism. The Greeks openly used theatrical metaphors to form their social institutions. Symbols are important." So what's the problem?
That you are not burning the very idea of politics with fire.

>>1848290
>you merely replaced them with some PR snow-job.
If that was true then why was it that after after the USSR was dissolved, GDP was cut in half, life expectancy dropped by ten years, forced prostitution, drug abuse and violent crime all spiked? If it was a mere replacement then that wouldn't have happened. Those were real consequences for real people.
>Because you get too much joy out of wielding it and you already fancy yourself as part of its brain. The chances of me making it to a leadership position is less than zero lol. Still I'm convinced it's the only way forward and humanity doesn't have a choice.
>It's a different tool than it was when you were waving it around 80 years ago,
Well yeah you need different tools for different conditions.
>and part of that is indeed due to your own actions.
I'm too powerless to have actually been able to do any actions. Maybe one day.
>it's that they and their thoughts need to be prevented from reproducing, including the idea that they're special.
You change their material conditions/job description their ideas of specialness ends up meaning nothing and any old conditioning eventually get pushed out.
>And for that I'd have you hanged.
As long as you promise to tie me up and whip me before hand uwu
>That you are not burning the very idea of politics with fire.
It's an unfortunate part of our social reality. Capitalists have a state, so we need a state in response.

>>1848282
>claiming marginalized people's problems cannot be ameliorated without targeting capitalism and actively ignoring racism
>you think black communists targeting racial oppression as well as capitalist is a waste of our time
Good thing no one thinks that. I said that fighting one is integral to fighting the other.

>>1848282
>black people organizing for Civil Rights did more to tackle racism
Two failed reconstructions plus school to prison pipeline and war on drugs isn't a good record for the liberals. Changing how the problem looks doesn't solve anything. Trying to separate them into different problems sounds exactly like the liberals saying you can solve Israel/Palestine without dismantling capitalism and imperialism, by fixing or legislating the way individuals think and act to be more how you want instead of changing the material incentives that makeup their belief structure. You can't change things by just imagining how you want them to be you have to have an actual understanding of how they exist now as they are and how they are socially reproduced.

>>1848295
>Still I'm convinced it's the only way forward and humanity doesn't have a choice.
Middle-class fascist cope.
>Well yeah you need different tools for different conditions.
If the "state" is being fashioned as a tool for you, then you are merely a red capitalist. The idea that *we* have no choice sounds like office bot rhetoric. The mutual ruin of the classes should always be considered as a ditching option.
>Capitalists have a state so we need a state in response.
I'm afraid it's worse than that. Capitalists also have the community of states; the UN is an organ of the neoliberal international order, which can align against you (albeit not very quickly). Another is mass surveillance; if you are being allowed to organize into power it's because porky knows you're not going to affect his interests.
80 years is a long time in the world. There are many reasons that the assumption may no longer be true. What does it actually buy you other than being like capitalists? Are you trying to compete with them for spectacle or something?

>>1848295
>As long as you promise to tie me up and whip me before hand uwu
*sigh* Oh alright

>>1848312
>If the "state" is being fashioned as a tool for you, then you are merely a red capitalist.
It's not for me as an individual but the working class that I am a part of. So when we get rid of all the bourgeoisie and we own the means of productions as a group do we all collectedly become capitalist in your view?
>Capitalists also have the community of states
It's difficult to be a singular socialist country so you need join with others like China and take advantage of bourgeois infighting like Russia vs NATO.
>mass surveillance
Yes it does increase the difficulty but only thing it does is eventually create a harder to crack organization.
>if you are being allowed to organize into power it's because porky knows you're not going to affect his interests.
If it's going to be a mass organization then at first sure, but the point of that is to lay low until you can take advantage of any crisis and push it to snowball further.
>80 years is a long time in the world. There are many reasons that the assumption may no longer be true.
I'm not sure I understand what you are getting at here. 80 years for what and what assumption is no longer true?
>What does it actually buy you other than being like capitalists?
Defeating the people lording above you is a reward in itself. Even if you don't end up with communism it better to try.

Anyway what's your plan for getting rid of capitalism if not using a state? You've been attacking my positions but you haven't said what you would do.

>>1848151
>Traditional ML might not to work in America or the EU but to throw out the entire thing doesn't make sense.

Imo maybe I'm a theory let but I always thought Maosim fit America better. At least I can easily see a communist America coming about a similar way. 6 way civil war, the democrats and Republicans having lost the mandate of heaven. Some guy with a crazy haircut leading a party out of Appalachia mountains or something. A red brown alliance forms to fight an opportunistic imperialist power.

>>1848389
Trumpism is basically right wing Maoism since it rallies the countryside against the urban centers. The fact that so few proles live in the countryside is why its dominated by the petit bourgeoisie and turns right wing as a political movement.

>>1848341
At best they're only ever stopgap measures.

>>1848389
Only because neither Maoists nor Americans read

>>1848455
Gee, I guess when you completely strip things down to a handful of superficial features and look really hard, an elephant is just like a city bus

>>1848137
My point in mentioning Bernie losing the black vote was mostly an expression of annoyance at racialism on the Left. You’ve got a whole host of people huffing that Sakai was right or whatever, but when African-Americans—allegedly the demographic that matters so much to working class politics that were expected to tolerate scorn for the majority of the country to appeal to them—cost the progressive candidate the election in favor of Genocide Joe, it seems to me that it strikes at the heart of this theory that they’re the most radical, the most prone to socialism, what have you. Then you’ve got America’s UN representative, a Black Woman, callously vetoing against any resolution that would help Palestinians. But when the topic of things like America’s brutal foreign policy gets brought up it’s White Americans and solely White Americans that get the blame. The way I see it, America’s Black population is in a position similar to the U.K.’s Scots which, for as much as they were a conquered people they still participated in the Imperial project, and to draw some distinction between “British Imperialism” and the Scots, to claim that there’s an inherent distinction between the guy from Glasgow and the guy from Birmingham in terms of who should be blamed for imperialism is silly in my book. Personally I’d rather blame neither, the historical reality was set in stone before they were born and neither could help it—but as it stands I’d say the mainstream position on the Left is to say that the individual should be blamed and held accountable for such circumstances. That the guy in Birmingham has to “make up” for the guy in Glasgow somehow (and of course he never will). That when Britain invades India it’s the Birmingham guy’s fault, and when a bunch of Highlanders under the British Flag shoot some Hindus it’s… also the Birmingham guys fault.

As for the Mosley posting, yeah I’ve done it a lot lately, sure. Though I’m surprised some people can’t understand why. When the common narrative you encounter in Communist circles is that there’s no hope, we’re all just deterministic offshoots of our economic (and in the case of the modern Left, racial) circumstances, that we have to sit on our hands and wait for the “real” revolutionaries to invade America (never gonna happen), then it’s a breath of fresh air to see someone who argues the opposite: that there is hope, that the human will can overcome circumstance, that no matter how bleak things look you can grab the bull by the horns and achieve lasting political change. And what, I’m supposed to uphold the “we’re weak and miserable and small” line constantly? I’m supposed to constantly tear down what I consider possible until all that’s left is this vague hope that one day, if I’m really lucky, I’ll have the opportunity to throw my hands up and cry “I surrender!” When some Afghan or Senagalese man waves a gun in my face? I find the idea abhorrent. So yeah, I’m a little more open to the guy who talks about the possibility of at least killing free market liberalism than the guy who talks only of the possibility of cleaning another person’s boots.

And I think the great irony of it all is that Sakai is pretty obviously, if not a Black Fascist himself, sympathetic to Black Fascism—a hell of a lot more than he’s sympathetic to communism at least. I would even go as far as saying that if you were to compare his and Mosley’s statements, the latter comes across as arguably less racist than the former. But whenever I’ve pushed against Sakai on the Left, I’ve been told it’s a step too far to call him an idiot, or assert that I have any kind of visceral dislike of him. I’ve been told that even if I “disagree” with him I have to understand “Black anger” or what have you and give him some legitimacy in that context. Of course such a charity isn’t extended to Mosley who, for all he was wrong about, didn’t purposely misquote Communists like Sakai did, as far as I’m aware.

All of which makes Sasuke/Berserk (glad he moved onto a better piece of media) huffing about the objectification of Black people all the more annoying to me. We have this idea that to treat someone as “a person” means to treat them “nicely” or “seriously” when the reality is there are a million people we dismiss out of hand. When some Q guy comes through my store ranting about medbeds I roll my eyes, he’s a fucking joke. I’d say it’s just as much a form of personhood, truly egalitarian personhood, to regard someone or their ideas as stupid. To express annoyance with them. Hell to even say you don’t want to be in the same room or associate with them: a person can choose where they go, who they associate with, what they take seriously. To express contempt or annoyance with a person isn’t to degrade them to the status of an unthinking object, but to see them as an equal enough to express active dislike of them. When a check comes through my line it’s annoying because it’s tedious to accept as payment, but I don’t hate the check itself: it’s an object, a little piece of paper. When I’m annoyed at the “race” stuff or even Sasuke Anon, It’s for reasons that are abundantly obvious to anyone observing in good faith.

When BLM was marching, I marched with them. When my Black friend was uncomfortable with walking back to his car, alone, the protest site I walked with him. When some White bitch was calling some Black worker a bitch and mocking her accent, I spoke up for the worker. I’ve donated hundreds of dollars to different Left Wing causes, even though I’m just a grocery store clerk, and after October 7th I paid what I could to Palestinian charities. I did this not to boast, but because I was a believer in the cause and wanted to help wherever I could. But in spite of all of that I get condescending little shits sneering it’ll never be good enough, that it can never go far enough, you attend the protests, tear down fascist propaganda, try to learn dutifully and assist where you can, and you get some asshole telling you you’ve done “the bare minimum”. You get thrown into a category and blamed whenever anything outside your control happens, and told that unless you scrape and beg and put on some act of hating yourself you’re not being an ally. So I’m done. I’m blackpilled. This is a wholly pointless cause not worth putting your heart into. Solidarity is a goddamn joke and supposed “comrades” are miserable people.

>>1850176
>Then you’ve got America’s UN representative, a Black Woman, callously vetoing against any resolution that would help Palestinians. But when the topic of things like America’s brutal foreign policy

When it comes to American leftism, its very complicated threading the needle when it comes to racial politics. You got to wade through rightful racial mistrust and also white guilt/resentment. It requires a lot a tact and you're right about this

>America’s brutal foreign policy gets brought up it’s White Americans and solely White Americans that get the blame.

I'm one the anons that has brought up completing the melting project because that shit is already almost done cooking. Black Americans don't want to be seen as some other, they want to be recognized for being Americans and putting in their work in creating this nations wealth and culture. They want to be made whole and there is a lot of confusion in the black community right now cause they can see the black bourgeoisies actively working against them. On the flip side you got the white community, especially the white working class who got the 80s crack epidemic handed to them in the 2000s with opioids. Who are told to suck it up cause their white, shit like what Hillary was doing. So either you got these liberal whites trying to atone for their white guilt or think they're about to be great replaced and it creates an atmosphere of inaction on all sides. Of course you got all the grifters every race playing off the theatrics. What the working class in America is starting to realize is it doesn't matter what color the person in power is. They're still a greedy American pig and they're also taking money from Israel.

>But in spite of all of that I get condescending little shits sneering it’ll never be good enough, that it can never go far enough, you attend the protests, tear down fascist propaganda, try to learn dutifully and assist where you can, and you get some asshole telling you you’ve done “the bare minimum”. You get thrown into a category and blamed whenever anything outside your control happens, and told that unless you scrape and beg and put on some act of hating yourself you’re not being an ally.

People that talk like that I see as wreckers and general just let them say their peace and keep on trucking. I'm not going stop fighting for black liberation cause I'm white and yeah maybe I could do more but I got other shit going on. The people you're helping will remember and care, the wreckers shouting from the sidelines trying to goad you into racism or apathy will be forgotten. Don't let the miserable haters drag you down CPUSA anon. I think you've been really on to something and getting close to threading that needle. When I read your one of your articles on substack. I can't remember the one but you said something like

>Americans will have to become the slaves and the master

That was perfect, Americans want reconciliation, they want a path forward out of the miasma of our narrow politics that rely on keeping us divided.

>>1850176
You are being overly invested with the immediate social feedback. While it sucks that some people are dismissive of your efforts or demand you be servile, you should be doing something because it's morally right or strategically correct.

We all want to be exclusively praised but it will never happen. There will always be someone who hates your guts, treats you with condescension or wants you to be servile, even when you are on the same side. But so what? If you need to work with them temporarily just try to ignore their shitty attitude and move on as fast as possible.
However, depending on the situation, people giving you shit might be a signal something is wrong, but if it has any validity they should back it up with real arguments not just attitude and social pressure.

Also, it seems that Solidarity as some vague ideal seems to be overly emphasized by liberals and left libertarians because they don't want a workers' state to enforce action. Not that it doesn't have it's uses but I wouldn't use that as a crutch to lean on.

>>1850176
serious question, do you think an appropriately tough and action oriented communist movement would appreciate an exasperated defense of mosley?

>>1851005
>>Americans will have to become the slaves and the master
This is literally what finance capital has been trying to get us to do, the ideal capitalist "worker".
>That was perfect, Americans want reconciliation, they want a path forward out of the miasma of our narrow politics that rely on keeping us divided.
Kek, fascist

>>1850176
> And I think the great irony of it all is that Sakai is pretty obviously, if not a Black Fascist himself, sympathetic to Black Fascism—a hell of a lot more than he’s sympathetic to communism at least. I would even go as far as saying that if you were to compare his and Mosley’s statements, the latter comes across as arguably less racist than the former. But whenever I’ve pushed against Sakai on the Left, I’ve been told it’s a step too far to call him an idiot, or assert that I have any kind of visceral dislike of him. I’ve been told that even if I “disagree” with him I have to understand “Black anger” or what have you and give him some legitimacy in that context. Of course such a charity isn’t extended to Mosley who, for all he was wrong about, didn’t purposely misquote Communists like Sakai did, as far as I’m aware.
Shit like this is the most on-the-nose example of how the anti-Sakai posting here has always been thinly veiled white idpol and a product of the general background of especially the original leftypol
>Uhhh Sakai is more racist than the literal British fascist that was pro-Hitler during the Holocaust! Why? Well he said white workers aren’t proles and that’s super mean and it hurt my feelings, he’s the reason why radlibs hate white males, not people like polyps, anti-SJWs, and myself, it’s because of an obscure 80s writer under a pen name! Sure, the book was written to try to answer why unions were anti-Civil Rights and pro-Vietnam War, but that doesn’t matter, because muh feelings!
I don’t think you’ve ever read J Sakai if you think he’s a “black fascist” of all things. I’ve never read Settlers, but I’ve read an essay of his called the Shock of Recognition, analyzing historical and contemporary fascisms, written around 2002. Like you, he actually combined historical materialism with what fascists said of their own ideology, unlike you he didn’t come away with a purely idealist analysis that sympathizes with fascism.
It’s ironic to say Sakai would be okay with black fascism, because in the Shock of Recognition, in addition to analyzing groups like the Taliban as Islamic fascists, he actually talks at length about groups like the NoI and modern gang culture while discussing what he saw as an emergent and very dangerous Afro-American fascism.

Honestly I think you know more about what other white leftypolers told you about Sakai’s outlook than having actually read anything Sakai himself wrote, which seems typical, for a certain kind of white communist who knows of Sakai and takes great exception to his 40 year old writings

>Why do people tell me I should understand black anger when they refuse to understand (sympathize with) the anger of some petty booj anglo fascist?
Because the anger of black communists towards guys like you isn’t remotely comparable to the anger of a suburbanite polyp at the jews?

>>1848137
>>1850176
wow what a wall of text.

Can someone explain why white American voters seem to be so much further left than black/brown ones? Look at the Sanders 2016/2020 campaign his supporters were overwhelmingly young and white while it was older MSNBC blacks who were against it.

Are sakaists actually just wrong and its actually anglos who are the most socialistic?

>>1852488
>White voters seem much further left than black ones
<Literally almost every white person that voted at all voted Trump in 2016 and most also voted Trump in 2020, and majority have voted Republican in most election cycles since the 80s
Maybe you just have confirmation bias and are actively seeing what you want to see?
Young people as a bloc are significantly more left wing than old people as a bloc, and of all groups, I promise black boomers definitely don’t have the most sway in the DNC, Biden’s base is literally boomer suburbanites and no one else, he had a coalition four years ago but it was a fragile one

>>1852490
bernie started losing as soon as he got to the conventions in the south having a larger % of black voters in the primaries despite winning blowout margins in the midwest and northeast

>>1852490
>>1852505
>Young people as a bloc are significantly more left wing than old people as a blo
yes thats true as Bernie actually won black voters under 30

>>1852505
>>1852507
No, you need to couch these in properly accurate terms
Sanders started losing in the South among Southern voters among the demographics most likely to vote in a DNC party primary, which is a self-selected population and necessarily skewed

>>1852486
>I don’t think you’ve ever read J Sakai if you think he’s a “black fascist” of all things.

Beyond purposely misquoting White Communists to imply they were racists he also dismissed Black Communists that worked in multiracial orgs in favor of figures like Marcus Garvey, who was buddy-buddy with Klansmen and had pic related to say about Fascism/"National Greatness".

And let's compare a couple quotes from J. Sakai and a couple from Mosley and see who sounds the most hateful of the pair.

>Now, there obviously is a white working class in the u.s. A large one, of many, many millions. From offshore oil derricks to the construction trades to auto plants. But it isn't a proletariat. It isn't the most exploited class from which capitalism derives its super profits. Far fucking from it. As a shorthand I call it the "whitetariat".
-J. Sakai, When Race Burns Class: Settlers Revisted

>Naturally, the revisionists always want to talk about it as a matter of white workers not sharing equally enough-as though when a robber enters your home and takes everything you've earned, the problem is that this thief should "share" your property better! Since the ideology of white labor was annexationist and predatory, it was of necessity also rabidly pro-Empire and, despite angry outbursts, fundamentally servile towards the bourgeoisie. It was not a proletarian outlook, but the degraded outlook of a would-be labor aristocracy.
-J. Sakai, Settlers, "White Labor Against the Oppressed"

>When we say that the petite-bourgeoisie consciousness of European immigrant labor showed that it was a degraded stratum seeking extra-proletarian privileges, we aren't talking about a few nickels and dimes; the issue was genocide, carrying out the dirty work of the capitalists in order to reap some of the bloody fruits of national oppression. It is significant that the organizational focus of the early anti-Chinese campaign was the so-called Working Men's Party of California, which was organized by an Irish immigrant confidence-man named Dennis Kearney. Kearney was the usual corrupt, phrase-making demagogue that the white masses love so well ("I am the voice of the people. I am the dictator.. . I owe the people nothing, but they owe me a great deal.")*

Wow, us Whitetarians sure are thieves. Real scum of the earth types. Now let's see statements Mosley made

<Question : Would you seek to forbid mixed marriages by law?

>Answer: No. It would be enough to let our people know the facts. Very few of them want mixed marriages. All the propaganda in favour of such ideas has had very little effect; the healthy instinct of the mass of the people is too strong. Tell our people the truth and revive the old pride in being British. That would be enough.
>After all, for generations our people ran the biggest Empire of mixed races known to history. It never occurred to them to go in for mixed marriages except in isolated instances, until war-time propaganda (for obvious reasons) began to suggest that all people were the same and that any idea to the contrary was wicked.

>To desire mixed marriages is not normal to the British. Nor is it natural among the Negroes. The leaders of the great negro communities like the Zulus are very averse to mixed marriages. They are proud of their stock and want to preserve it.

<Question : Can racial differences never be overcome intellectually and socially?
>Answer: Yes, of course they can at a certain level of intelligence, education and character. The first gulf which is overcome by intelligence is what was called class. It ceases to exist already at a certain level of intelligence. The next is the gulf of generation. That, too, is overcome at a certain level of intelligence or of character. The third and last gulf to overcome-the hardest task-is the gulf between races. Of course, it is surmounted already by men of very great intelligence. For instance, few of the world’s leading scientists in discussing their own subjects, would be preoccupied by the thought that they came from different races.

I mean racist? Sure. Don't think anyone can deny that. Referring to one race as a whole as thieves, murderers, and coming up with absurd slurs for them? (Let's not pretend "Whitetariat" is a term of endearment) No.

And again.

>The civilisation we intend to create must be durable and humane. This means that the Blacks cannot be subjected to the Whites in Africa, and exploited as a pool of cheap, inferior labour. There is plenty of room for both White and Black in Africa, which is still relatively an empty continent. There is ample room for two nations, each with access to the necessary wealth for a full life and a high standard. But they must be separate nations if we are not to revert to the sweating and exploitation of the old colonialism.

Forgive me, I must have my "white people" glasses on because it seems to me "Don't exploit blacks, there's plenty of room for us to coexist" seems a lot less hateful than:

>Even neo-colonialism was too good for Afrikans in the opinion of white labor.

Y'know the most annoying thing about Sakaifags, beyond the fact they can't even spell "America" correctly, is how they'll say purposely inflammatory shit then take any annoyed reaction to a deliberate provocation on their part as some kind of confirmation of their worldview. They'll call White Workers, all White workers, collectively, thieves, murderers, the scum of the earth, and on and on. They'll insist that there can be no solidarity between the two in the most insulting and contemptuous terms. Then when White people naturally throw up their hands and say "Fine. Clearly we can't live or work together. We don't want anything to do with you." The Sakai types will jump up and down and say, "SEE?! SEE?! HE PROVED OUR POINT!"

Let's pretend for even an instance that Sakai was right; then clearly as a White working class guy you need to start thinking in terms of limited resources and a conflict over those resources. In that regard it's a matter of whether you want those resources going towards "us" or "them", and you have to determine that any advancement in the African American community is coming at your cost. If a Black man gets a house, that means you lose a house. If a Black man gets a job, you lose a job. Consequently, every social welfare policy designed to uplift the poor (of which an enormous portion are African-American) comes at the cost of making you poorer.

But Sakai-types want to have their cake and eat it, too. The message to White workers is they should be lectured to, insulted, demeaned, and made to feel ashamed. It wants them scraping and pleading for any kind of "forgiveness" they don't deserve purely because of an accident of birth. But if White workers read that, and, en masse, say "Well it's them or us, and I don't want it to be us." Then Sakai will have achieved a situation that would be truly awful for Black America. It'd be a dismal war of White on Black that would impoverish both, but likely end in even worse circumstances for Black America. Because rather than class consciousness (which will rise regardless) leading to the solidarity of Black and White, it would be segmented and pit the two against one another.

But these are all just casual thoughts.

>>1852699
Is there a reason you didn’t respond to most of what I said, or am I meant to reply to your personal cherrpicked reply, where you scream and shit yourself because you think a single writer was unfair to white proles 40 years ago, while downplaying a literal explicit Hitlerite’s racism, ignoring the reality that the collaborationism of unions reached a point of literally attacking protestors against the Vietnam War which was after decades of unions siding with racial chauvinism over class solidarity no matter how it affected their class, and ignoring the reality that when Sakai was actually writing America had just elected Ronald Reagan to function as the Grim Reaper of the New Deal and Civil Rights Movement put together

But I guess only imperial chauvinists, nationalists, and explicit fascists are the only people that should be understood, the context Sakai was writing in shouldn’t be discussed or recognized, only Anglo Hitlerites like Oswald Mosley get such a privileged 😴

It does seem peculiar to me that you find Hitlerites that praise nationalism, imperial statecraft, racial separatism, and white supremacy sympathetic in a way you cannot with a self-described communist that criticized the white labor movement (from all that I’ve heard, Settlers was essentially a critique of the racial chauvinism in the US labor movement and US socialists) but that’s just a casual observation

>>1852478
<>That was perfect, Americans want reconciliation, they want a path forward out of the miasma of our narrow politics that rely on keeping us divided.
>Kek, fascist
nta but how is national unity, just by itself, fascism? Can't socialist use national unity as a stepping stone to effective collective action?

>>1852736
National unity is literally the essence of fascist politics
Literally the annihilation of all that divides the nation

>>1852699
I like that part in settlers when Sakai uses that quote about blacks being [made into] a race of scabs as proof of white racism when in context it's actually the exact opposite. Like he had to intentionally misrepresent it, just straight up lie, to try and make his point. After that it's ridiculous that anyone would take him seriously.

>>1852749
>annihilation of all that divides the nation
It would be fascist if the goal was to unite the bourgeoisie with the worker.
But his argument was about using nationalism to unite the workers and fight the bourgeoisie.

>>1852773
I guess his argument is, to me, the typical historical ignorance of the leftypol milieu
Appealing to national chauvinism and calling out porky as le parasitic traitor to the nation was already attempted, it resulted in the original fascists
Honestly a big part of why this board keeps running back into the dead end of national chauvinism and proto-fascism is the extreme, powerful ignorance people on this board have regarding the origin of fascism
It’s all bound up in tying fascism to being a scheme by capitalists and also ontologically evil that most here don’t actually know many of the OG fascists were themselves dissident socialists

>>1852708
>Is there a reason you didn’t respond to most of what I said, or am I meant to reply to your personal cherrpicked reply, where you scream and shit yourself because you think a single writer was unfair to white proles 40 years ago

If you're a Communist or Anarchist you're informed by writers from hundreds of years ago. You're trying to say a writer who, as far as I know, is still alive today, is irrelevant because that was "ages ago" while still insisting he's right about things.

Again, you want to have your cake and eat it too. You very clearly like Sakai and agree with him on some things, but when people respond "Well I dislike him" you huff and cry that they shouldn't even be thinking about him 'cause that was 40 years ago.

>while downplaying a literal explicit Hitlerite’s racism

<Question : Then you did not at any time agree with Nazi racial policies?
>Answer: No, I did not agree and have expressed myself clearly on the point in public on a number of occasions. Our policy in this respect as in others was very different. The reason was that our problem and our aim were both different. Our problem was to conduct a great Empire consisting of many different races, and our aim was to hold it together and develop it. The Nazi Party’s declared policy was to unite all the German peoples in Europe, and their aim was to bring them together in an area adequate to their economic survival. Our policy on racial matters was therefore naturally different from their policy. And now that the war has broken up the Empire and made the conduct of what remains in the old way impossible, we do not change the British tradition in racial policy. We would discourage mixed marriages, but would not repress them by law. We can trust our people under the right guidance not to make them.
>Our British contribution should always be balance and sanity in such matters. There was an element of hysteria in the Nazi approach to these things, which ended in disaster. The racial theme was exaggerated and pushed to extremes. (I speak now of peace time, and not of war atrocities which I deal with in another answer). An exaggerated and hysterical view of facts which are true in themselves can lead to an inhuman situation in which things are done which frustrate the very idea it was desired to promote. It is right to be proud of your own race and to try to preserve it, but not to lose all sense of balance and proportion on the subject.

From Mosley himself. You're promoting a guy who's calling literally every White worker a thief then acting outraged that one of those same supposed murderous thieves is quoting a guy saying "Well races shouldn't mix but otherwise I wish them the best."

The fact you're complaining about "cherry-picking" when Sakai purposely cherry-picked quotes from White Communists to call them racists proves my point, you want to have your cake and eat it too.

>ignoring the reality that the collaborationism of unions reached a point of literally attacking protestors against the Vietnam War which was after decades of unions siding with racial chauvinism over class solidarity no matter how it affected their class

It was White students that were murdered at Kent State. You and Sakai both would be whining that they were settlers. And as for racial chauvanism affecting class; there no longer exists class in Sakai's worldview. Just race, which supersedes it.

>and ignoring the reality that when Sakai was actually writing America had just elected Ronald Reagan to function as the Grim Reaper of the New Deal and Civil Rights Movement put together

Again it's a conflict of resources between races in Sakai's worldview. The destruction of the New Deal was disastrous for White people and a problem for White people. So taking it seriously as a White worker who's read Sakai, the goal should be to secure another New Deal for Whites and upend these politicians who've betrayed White workers. There's no room for sympathy or solidarity in that worldview. No room for working together.

>But I guess only imperial chauvinists, nationalists, and explicit fascists are the only people that should be understood, the context Sakai was writing in shouldn’t be discussed or recognized, only Anglo Hitlerites like Oswald Mosley get such a privileged 😴

You're whining that people are given a book that insults them, explicitly, and they aren't treating it with "nuance" and "respect". Maybe if Sakai were a bit more polite, sure, but he gets the respect he gives.

Also was it "just 40 years ago" and thus can be ignored or do we have to treat it seriously and with respect? Make up your mind.

>It does seem peculiar to me that you find Hitlerites that praise nationalism, imperial statecraft, racial separatism, and white supremacy

Is it racial separatism or white supremacy? Because if races are kept separate from each other and unable to dominate one another's affairs, how is that enforcing the supremacy of any particular race?

>in a way you cannot with a self-described communist that criticized the white labor movement (from all that I’ve heard, Settlers was essentially a critique of the racial chauvinism in the US labor movement and US socialists) but that’s just a casual observation

Well it's really simple: Sakai straight up lied about White Communists to make them sound racist. Dunno why you're ignoring that fact. When White Union leaders pointed out that Capitalists would try to use underpaid minorities as scabs to break up labor solidarity and stir racial resentment, Sakai would come in and claim that they were threatening to lynch black people and telling them to be subservient. I've read Mosley's critiques of Communism and they're fairly blase in comparison: he claims Communists are economically deterministic and deny human agency. Probably his most insulting critique is the old canard that Communists had "aggressive foreign policy". For fuck's sake his response to China going to Communist was essentially "When you beat people down long enough, force them into sweatshops, and deprive them of their dignity of course they're going to go Communist. You left them with no other option!"

Mosley appears to give more credit to his ideological enemies than Sakai gives to his supposed ideological allies. Like I said, I've read plenty of Mosley and a bit of Sakai. The only way you can honestly wonder why I'd find one more sympathetic than the other is so glaringly obvious that I'm surprising you don't realize it. Seriously, do I have to say it out loud? Alright, fuck it: Empathy 101 time.

Okay, so when some White politician talks about "welfare queens" or uses coded language to obliquely attack the Black Community, Black people get rightfully angry, right? If some fucking hick says something like "We've got a real problem with all these 'urban youths' doing crime" then plenty of people would suspect he's just couching his bigotry behind another term. And if any of these people are confronted on it, they'll try to worm their way out of it and say something like: "What? Noooo I wasn't talking about Black people. Why did Black people think I'm attacking them when I talk about lazy people abusing welfare… unless?" If a Black person speaks up when a hick whines about "urban youths" and says he finds the statement atrocious, and the hick responds: "What? I was just talking about Criminals! Not Black people!" Then we rightly agree that for however much crime might be an issue, he's specifically trying to racialize it and that's wholly unacceptable, right?

Again, these Sakai quotes:

>>Now, there obviously is a white working class in the u.s. A large one, of many, many millions. From offshore oil derricks to the construction trades to auto plants. But it isn't a proletariat. It isn't the most exploited class from which capitalism derives its super profits. Far fucking from it. As a shorthand I call it the "whitetariat".
>>Naturally, the revisionists always want to talk about it as a matter of white workers not sharing equally enough-as though when a robber enters your home and takes everything you've earned, the problem is that this thief should "share" your property better! Since the ideology of white labor was annexationist and predatory, it was of necessity also rabidly pro-Empire and, despite angry outbursts, fundamentally servile towards the bourgeoisie. It was not a proletarian outlook, but the degraded outlook of a would-be labor aristocracy.
>Kearney was the usual corrupt, phrase-making demagogue that the white masses love so well ("I am the voice of the people. I am the dictator.. . I owe the people nothing, but they owe me a great deal.")*

He's not even being oblique about it! It's not coded. It's not indirect. He's telling you explicitly what he feels. So what am I supposed to think? That I'm not part of the "whitetariat"? That I'm not part of "predatory white labor"? That I'm not born from the "white masses" that apparently love demagogues?

Am I supposed to think that I'm just "one of the good ones"?

I genuinely, earnestly, can't understand how this really simple thing is so fucking hard for Sakai's minority supporters to understand. In fact part of me expects you know full well why people dislike him, but you're playing the same wormy game that the racist does when he talks about being "tough on crime". You aren't stupid, and I everyone here knows how insulting and dismissive "you're one of the good ones" is.

And yet, this is what blows my mind, you're pretending like you can't understand why we'd dislike the guy calling us a "predatory, corrupt, whitetariat". And after showing zero concern at the guy referring to White laborers and White union leaders in such bitter terms, you act shocked when they sympathize more with the guy complimenting them!

It's fucking absurd. It's like Republicans wondering why they don't have more black people in the party. "B-But we're the party of Lincoln! You should be on OUR side!"

>>1852488
>>1852507
Just wanna say this makes a nice little addendum to my post here: >>1852806

>Black voters overwhelmingly vote Biden against Bernie. A few young Black activists try to publicly disrupt Bernie events or accuse him of racism.
<"No no no. You've got to understand, it was older Black voters that voted against him, and maybe they thought Biden was the best shot to win? You need nuance."

>White Boomers overwhelmingly voted for Reagan, leading to the destruction of the New Deal
<"White people are to blame for this! They aren't proletarians, they're whitetarians! They're servile minions of the Bourgeoisie!"

If I recall correctly, the Black vote was also a major reason for Prop 8 in California back during 2008.

>>1852806
> If you're a Communist or Anarchist you're informed by writers from hundreds of years ago. You're trying to say a writer who, as far as I know, is still alive today, is irrelevant because that was "ages ago" while still insisting he's right about things.
I think Sakai is irrelevant because he’s largely unknown, not because he wrote in the 80s. How many people know of J Sakai outside of fringe radical circles? Most people aren’t communists and most communists never talk about J Sakai, yet they’re the few people who would even know of him. I’ve actually read more said about Sakai from white socialists offended by him than I have from straw-radlibs that stan him.
> Again, you want to have your cake and eat it too. You very clearly like Sakai and agree with him on some things, but when people respond "Well I dislike him" you huff and cry that they shouldn't even be thinking about him 'cause that was 40 years ago.
I mentioned very directly the only text ever written by J Sakai I have ever read, which was the Shock of Recognition, an essay discussing fascism that goes out of its way to state fascism is not simply a phenomenon of white people or european societies and admonishes leftists that believe so, I’m sure you missed that when whining about me stating you didn’t respond to what I said in my previous comment.
> From Mosley himself. You're promoting a guy who's calling literally every White worker a thief then acting outraged that one of those same supposed murderous thieves is quoting a guy saying "Well races shouldn't mix but otherwise I wish them the best."
I’m sure Mosley is being extremely honest and speaking in good faith while denying his support for the Nuremberg Laws and the Final Solution in the years after the war
At any rate, I never actually mentioned Sakai at all before you mentioned him, because you think my own observation about how certain white socialists behave is “sakaism”, and not observations about people I’ve interacted with online and IRL

Your kneejerk, hysterical response is the sort of thing I was talking about FYI
> The fact you're complaining about "cherry-picking" when Sakai purposely cherry-picked quotes from White Communists to call them racists proves my point, you want to have your cake and eat it too.
I say you’re cherrypicking because you’re parroting snippets of singular quotes from different things written by him and outlining what you think is the important part
Except unlike you, Sakai actually didn’t have the internet 40-50 years ago to go back and see if he was correctly characterizing the people he was quoting, because I’d agree that as far as I know he did misquote some famous US communist.
> It was White students that were murdered at Kent State. You and Sakai both would be whining that they were settlers. And as for racial chauvanism affecting class; there no longer exists class in Sakai's worldview. Just race, which supersedes it.
Lmao I wouldn’t whine about the protestors, but I’m sure you would defend the majority of Americans that supported their murder.
> Again it's a conflict of resources between races in Sakai's worldview. The destruction of the New Deal was disastrous for White people and a problem for White people. So taking it seriously as a White worker who's read Sakai, the goal should be to secure another New Deal for Whites and upend these politicians who've betrayed White workers. There's no room for sympathy or solidarity in that worldview. No room for working together.
If someone talking about the reality of racial chauvinism in the United States and the fact that white laborers historically chose the marginal benefit of racial oppression over the absolute benefit of class struggle offends you this much, can you see why they, someone that lived in a time when racial oppression was a legally enshrined institution, thought the way they do?
Like, you’re offended at Sakai’s writing, but the difference between you and Sakai is that Sakai actually was around in the 60s and 70s
> You're whining that people are given a book that insults them, explicitly, and they aren't treating it with "nuance" and "respect". Maybe if Sakai were a bit more polite, sure, but he gets the respect he gives.
I’m not whining at all, I’m saying very directly that the reason you can apply nuance to historical fascists organizing at the height of fascism’s dominance but not to some new left radical writing after the rise of Reagan is very obvious; when it is showering praise upon you the writing is sympathetic to you no matter what worldview is espoused, vice-versa if it feels it criticizes you

For instance, “given a book”, except, who would have given you Settlers to read, other than some stupidpol type trying to make you feel victimized for being white? I don’t even think Settlers was written specifically for white leftists in the 2010s to begin with, I think it was written for the left being shoved underground in the 80s, it wasn’t really meant to be some treatsie to anger some potential white communist 40 years after its publication.
>Also was it "just 40 years ago" and thus can be ignored or do we have to treat it seriously and with respect? Make up your mind.
I didn’t say anything about treating it with respect, are you mad that I noticed that you’re more willing to hold nuance for explicit Hitlerites over “sakaists”?
> Is it racial separatism or white supremacy? Because if races are kept separate from each other and unable to dominate one another's affairs, how is that enforcing the supremacy of any particular race?
“Separate but equal” was already attempted in the United States, yes, “separate but equal” is just the supremacy of whatever racial group is enforcing laws against “race mixing”
> Well it's really simple: Sakai straight up lied about White Communists to make them sound racist.
That’s fair, I’m not sure if it was necessarily lying so much as simply misreading or not understanding what the individual had said, after all, the world wide web and Marxists.net didn’t exist when Settlers was published

Is there a reason you keep dancing around the fact that you do not feel similar revulsion for open, explicit, Hitlerite fascists with actual influence?

Like, let me sum it up mate:
You are hopping up and down claiming Sakai is completely wrong, and also a super mean, evil, wicked anti-communist and far worse than actual, explicit, influential fascists, whilst you yourself have been jerking it to Oswald Mosley quotes and talking about how you’re getting ready to abandon politics because “the Left” keeps attacking “White People”

Like seriously, this is your argument dude
>I AM SO FUCKING SICK OF RADLIBS PRETENDING TO BE COMMUNISTS AND TRYING TO DESTROY THE NATION, THE RACE, AND THE CULTURE, HERE’S THIS BASED MOSLEY QUOTE ABOUT CAESAR AND SPARTACUS
<Why are you implying I’m a racial and national chauvinist, how dare you say this is something you’ve seen with white communists before, YOU DERANGED SAKAIST LUNATIC
Shit like this is exactly why “sakaists” (POC leftists that criticize the conduct of white socialists) will always exist dude
So long as “Always cater to my feelings or else I join the Nazis” continues to be a thing among white anti-capitalists “sakaism” will continue to be a thing

>>1852798
>typical historical ignorance of the leftypol milieu
Didn't it work in the 20th century with all the socialist states though? Obviously the end results were not optimal but that's because it didn't move beyond nationalism. Nationalism shouldn't be the end goal but it can be a first step to overcome racial and ethnic division.

Why are you guys defending Mosley or Sakai, they're both terrible. Though Mosley is worse obviously.

>>1844601
ITT, self aggrandizing and lotsa stroking off, mentally.

>>1852847
>Except unlike you, Sakai actually didn’t have the internet 40-50 years ago to go back and see if he was correctly characterizing the people he was quoting, because I’d agree that as far as I know he did misquote some famous US communist.

It wasn’t accidental. He’d take excerpts from speeches and deliberately remove context, like we aren’t talking about him forgetting what’s on page 13 after reading page 1, he would ignore what’s in the next sentence to prove his point. That isn’t “a mistake” as you’re characterizing it, that’s intent.

As for the Mosley being dishonest or untrustworthy, I can find text that’s pre-war and pre-holocaust where he explicitly says he disagrees with Nazi racial policy.

I’ll unfortunately have to respond to the rest of your post later, but it’s still funny you can’t see the fucking irony here. “Uhh you’re not reading Sakai, you’re not giving him a fair shot!” Well, what of Mosley’s works have you read?
>”I won’t read Mosley because he’s a white supremacist!”
<“Well, how do you know unless you read him?”
>”I don’t have to! He called himself a Fascist!”
Sakai specifically called me and other white workers shifty backstabbers. It doesn’t take a genius to see in his writing that he’s a very angry man who genuinely hates us. Why would I want to read that or take it seriously? Just because he calls himself a communist? He’s just a National Socialist for the Black Nation. Thing is you’re so used to the double-standard at this point that you’ve begun to think of it as the standard, and it makes you angry when people aren’t playing to it: chauvinism and resentment for me, sober nodding and guilty acknowledgments for thee. When Mosley restates a position he’s restated multiple times, well that’s just cause he’s a dastardly fascist who’s lying to make his ideas look correct. When Sakai intentionally misquotes White Communists to make them look racist, well the internet wasn’t around! It was an honest mistake! When Sakai calls all white people a bunch of servile thieves and oppressors, it’s the duty of those same servile thieves and oppressors, according to you, to cross their legs and nod sheepishly along, to see him as a “serious thinker” using “serious, intellectual” terms like “whitetariat”. When Mosley says “races have to be kept separate to avoid exploiting each other, but can still live as neighbors” you huff and puff. It’s an outrage! And you demand we all trip over ourselves to repudiate him; not merely say we disagree, but to be as angry and upset at the statement as you are. Why?

Well, proletarian solidarity of course! The same solidarity that Sakai spent his whole literary career taking a shit on. We’re supposed to feel some kind of affection or desire to help the people insisting we aren’t the same, not the same class, not the same people. You can only muster up the most limp fucking critique of Sakai; “oh, he made some mistakes but it’s really the people who dislike him who are the problem!” Then act like it’s some personal hypocrisy when people mirror your position right back at you.

And Sakai is “worried” about nonwhite Fascism? He reaps what he fucking sows.

>>1852927
>When Sakai intentionally misquotes White Communists to make them look racist, well the internet wasn’t around! It was an honest mistake! When Sakai calls all white people a bunch of servile thieves and oppressors, it’s the duty of those same servile thieves and oppressors, according to you, to cross their legs and nod sheepishly along, to see him as a “serious thinker” using “serious, intellectual” terms like “whitetariat”. When Mosley says “races have to be kept separate to avoid exploiting each other, but can still live as neighbors” you huff and puff. It’s an outrage! And you demand we all trip over ourselves to repudiate him; not merely say we disagree, but to be as angry and upset at the statement as you are. Why?

What possible logical leap from your criticism of Sankara could lead to your conclusion that Mosley is based and redpilled or whatever about white supremacist racial segregation. It seems you're irrationally whipping to the opposite end of the same argument out of emotion and spite, something you surely wouldn't do if you had any material disagreements with the premise of Sankara's argument.

>>1852847
>Except unlike you, Sakai actually didn’t have the internet 40-50 years ago to go back and see if he was correctly characterizing the people he was quoting, because I’d agree that as far as I know he did misquote some famous US communist.
I went and read the book he got the "race of strike breakers" quote from and to come to the conclusion that Sakai did you'd either have to completely ignore everything leading up to it or else intentionally mischaracterize it.

Either way it severely undercuts any credibility he has. He's either lying in order to make his point or his scholarship is so rubbish that you can't take anything he says seriously. And this happens repeatedly in his "work" where if you go to the trouble of tracking down his sources the context points to the exact opposite conclusion that he draws.

>>1852944
And tbh the reason that Sakai straight up lies about the quote is because it not only points to Communists coming to grips with the deleterious effects of racism on the movement, but it also illustrates that it wasn't only whites that were at fault. While white people were keeping black workers out of the union, black religious leaders were also doing a lot of heavy lifting to keep the races separate because unionization was a direct threat to their power.

Like you have a communist saying with his full throat "we have to start working NOW to overcome racism in our society and movement and not let the capitalists use our racial estrangement to keep us both in bondage" and Sakai is like "see? Crackers just hate black people."

>>1852858
I wasn't defending Sakai, I was adding nuance to the claims made by and about Sakai after CPUSA anon tried using Sakai' existence to justify their own chauvinism
CPUSA anon is part of a subset of the internet communist milieu that sees any critique of white self-described socialists from non-white self-described socialists as "sakaism", so when I stated a lot of their posts reek of national chauvinism and it comes off like they sympathize heavily with Mosley they responded with bizarre off-kilter white grievance arguments and accusing me of being a "sakaist"

>>1852963 (me)
To add on since then they've resorted to trying to cover up their retreat into white identity politics and national chauvinism with foaming mouthed rants about Sakai not venerating unions from the 30s or the CPUSA enough and whining that Sakai just hated white people and how if Sakai was right they (CPUSA anon) ought to just become a fascist then (revealing enough on its own)

At least what's telling to me is the fact that CPUSA anon is mainly ranting about how Sakai was mean to white Americans and was dishonest, rather than just explaining why he was wrong from a materialist perspective

>>1852943
I’m sure you’re misspelling Sakai here, I’ve got no problem with Sankara.

My point is it’s an obvious double standard. Minority communists sympathize with Sakai and they won’t make any intense criticism of him, but they’ll demand that White communists completely annihilate even the smallest speck of chauvinism in them. They’ve got no problem hearing vulgar racist statements from their own but act like it’s the duty of the White communists to repudiate racist statements from Whites and tolerate racist statements from nonwhites.

>>1852966
I’ve seen actual scientists argue with flat earthers. The flat earther kept whining the scientist was being a dick, because the scientist kept calling him a moron and wasn’t engaging with his “scholarship” seriously.

It’s fucking absurd. It just shows the blatant double standard. “Hmm, why aren’t you taking the guy ranting and raving about the ‘whitetariat’ seriously and engaging him in sober materialist debate?” It’s because he doesn’t even take his own writing seriously! Read that mother fucker, and it’s obvious he’s writing from a place of hate and anger. It’s fucking seeping off the text! Again, the only reason anyone is demanding we treat him as a serious scholar is because we’re used to a double standard by now.

>>1852488
As far as Bernie's loss in 2020 goes, his defeat was largely thanks to the Black political machine that emerged out of the civil rights movement. Radical black leaders died or were imprisoned or killed, while the survivors integrated into the middle class/democrat party.

So you have Obama at the top clearing out all the rest of the "challengers" and then Cockburn disciplining the Black vote in SC, which has the added detriments of being dominated by deeply religious and conservative organizations making them poorly disposed towards Sanders for being a white, progressive Jew, and the history of KKK/FBI activity eliminating any real political alternatives.

And personally, I wouldn't put too much faith in the outcome as being indicative of Black disposition in general, because as we've already seen the Democratic Party will do whatever it takes to get the results they want, so it's not like you can take the primaries at face value.

>>1844601
>is le patriotism bad
anarchist detected: read Ho Chi Minh

>>1853006
Literally nothing you’ve done actually amounts to a material critique of Sakai, you just, again, keep circling back to him being mean to white Americans, so mean that it’s somehow encouraging you to read Mosley, and also something something darkie commies aren’t as heckin mad at Sakai as you think they should be

Where is the materialist takedown of Sakai’s position? I know you like Mosley and ᴉuᴉlossnW too much to bother criticizing their positions and nationalism anymore, but since you’ve got dribbling hatred for Sakai I’m sure you can at least engage in a materialist critique of his outlook?

Or are you too far removed from materialism by now to takedown what I think actually is a theoretically flawed approach by Sakai, from what I know of his outlook?

Or would doing that and then moving on from the “Sakai” deflection lead us back to what you’re actively trying to distract from, namely, you psyoping yourself towards fascism because black leftists were too mean to white people on Twitter(?)

Ngl at this point idk what even got you this far down the abyss of white grievance posting

>>1853025
>you just, again, keep circling back to him being mean to white Americans
Sakai enjoyer admits to poor reading comprehension, shocking no one.

>>1853006
I'm>>1852943

yeah I did mistake Sankara for Sakai for some reason. Entirely different figures. Apologies.

>>1853023
patriotism and racism not the same thing lol

>>1853025
There's plenty of people better than me that have made more in-depth critiques of Sakai, but to elaborate on my critique more.

Sakai's writing style and obvious anger is, in fact, a material critique. Reducing it to just "being mean to White people" is incorrect. The entire premise of Settlers is undermined because Sakai can't restrain his obvious hatred and anger. Sure, Karl Marx could get "snarky" in a few segments of Capital but with Sakai his anger overrides his scholarly arguments. If Marx spent Capital telling horror stories about how the Bourgeoisie treated proles instead of the much meme'd on fixation with the price of bolts of linen, then he never would have gotten far as an actual scholar and his work could be dismissed out of hand.

When it comes to Sakai's actual scholarship it's rife with errors. As I mentioned he intentionally misquotes White Communists to make them sound racist. Again, I have to keep hammering that point. It's on the same level of Homer Simpson's "Sweet Can" moment. The most-quoted example being the "race of strike breakers" where Sakai intentionally characterizes White communists as threatening Blacks to "get in line" when they were explaining that they can't let the Bourgeoisie try to turn Blacks into scabs and stir up White racial resentment (as that would obviously distract from class struggle).

Then there's his poor sourcing. It's to the point it appears that whenever he quotes a percentage he's just making up statistics. He'll reference a stat, say, however many factory workers are in the U.S. (using Bureau of Labor Statistics) then just say outright "60% of these are Labor Aristocrats" without elaborating on how he got to that number. He claimed Lenin once said that 20% of the German Social Democratic Party were "Labor Aristocrats" and people have been unable to find any quote from Lenin where he says such; and given Sakai's prior habit of intentionally misquoting Communists, it's not hard to think that he just made up a Lenin quote.

There's also the very nature of the "Labor Aristocrat" argument, which is that it's used more as a justification after the fact for why Communists couldn't win over elements of the working class, and it doesn't have much to go off of but vibes.

One can say a person is a Proletarian if their primary source of income is derived from selling their labor (e.g. earning a wage) and that's a pretty solid category. A Bourgeois individual derives their income primarily from owning the means of production and that category can follow a gradient from petite-bourgeoisie (usually defined as a "small business owner" who has a limited amount of capital, may work for himself or alongside his employees) to haute-bourgeoisie (the real movers and shakers of the Capitalist world, you don't see Jeff Bezos working in an Amazon fulfillment center to keep his business running).

All those prior terms at least have a material basis in one's relationship to the means of production: working it but not owning, working it and owning it, owning it but not working it, etc.

What makes someone a "labor aristocrat"? Is there any threshold one crosses in which they go from being a prole to being a labor aristocrat? Is it just "proles who make a lot of money"? Well how do we categorize "a lot of money"? If you own one home, are you a labor aristocrat? Or do you have to own at least two? If you make $100k a year but work 12 hours a day in a factory, 6 days a week, are you a "labor aristocrat"? Are certain professions labor aristocrats? Is a worker who saves up some money to buy stocks a labor aristocrat; in which case Marx would perhaps be one himself. Of course, every now and again I won't have a problem making a judgement based off vibes: I talked a friend out of an extremely sketchy drug deal based off of nothing more than vibes, but Sakai uses Labor Aristocrats categorically; all the White masses are servile, racist, treacherous, and so much so that they magically cease to be proletarian; of course, no mention is made of how the Black Buffalo Soldiers slaughtered Plains Indians and whether that makes Blacks "Labor Aristocrats" because ultimately Sakai was setting out to make a claim and then find evidence for it later, the fact he had to completely fabricate evidence in some cases only serves to undermine his original claim.

All this brings me to my final point, which is that for as much as Sakai is a niche author, his attitude and his work is representative of a broader trend within the American Left in particular. Away from what's intended to be a mass political movement and toward a niche subculture, personally I suspect the cross-pollination with Anarchists and the Punk scene is partly to blame. Sakai only serves to give a voice and a text to a general attitude: contempt for the masses, contempt for the mainstream, flip the script so that it's the working masses that betrayed Socialism rather than the Socialists who've failed the masses. The position which has become common enough in the broader radical Left, that radical or revolutionary change has become wholly impossible in the first world and so Socialists have to "undermine the imperial core" (almost always meaning just post like a misanthrope) so the "real" revolution can begin elsewhere. And the big irony is that same attitude is just a mirror of Rod Dreher's "Benedict Option" ("Oh Conservative Christianity has failed! We need to retreat from the world like the monks of old! Then after society collapses we can emerge from our enclaves and achieve a final victory!") It's just millenarian proselytizing from a group that's completely surrendered making meaningful political change. Thank Christ the Palestinian Solidarity movement isn't completely run by Communists, because chances are they wouldn't even get a protest off the ground if that was the case ("Oh the Unis won't ever divest from Israel, and the feds will just break up our group anyways, all we can do is loudly talk about how angry we are all the time while Hamas does all the hard work!")

And if you respond to all this wishy-washy defeatism with "Well if we're fucked here, I still want to do something good with my time on earth, guess I'll just become some kind of radical SocDem" you'll get shouted down and cursed out because you're "breaking the faith." You don't want to seclude yourself in a monastery and wait for the end times to wipe the slate clean. You want to struggle and fight even if you're doomed, not seclude yourself to pray in some cloister. If the Huns are at the gate, you want to be able to look them square in the eye. If the fight's doomed, then it's doomed. If every claim about the struggle being hopeless, impossible, or self-defeating is true, then you can at least give yourself a purpose by struggling in spite of that. Making changes that you think can lead to success, however small. It's sure a lot better than waiting around with your cock in your hands.