Let's take climate change as the example you highlighted. Why have you gone down the right track but they have not? Why have they not chosen to look it up in the first place? Are we going to posit that our political theory of change is that we are smarter and therefore we have outsmarted them in getting there first? If it is due to a political horizon stunted for a lifetime then how come you escaped it? What makes you so special? Is your case replicable at scale? (If you would like you can change the "you" to "one" or even me in all these questions)
I will put it another way. Why is marxism neither workerism nor populism? Why are the proleteriat considered the most revolutionary class?
These aren't gotchas. We need to think of class perspectives and we need to think of it as more than just bourgoisie vs proleteriat.
I believe USAmericans are a significantly reactionary mass that is more than just one-third of the population. And your examples of socdem compromises aren't reassuring.
We, as westerners, as a class on the world stage are regressive. We (as in western MLs) are rare to have these perspectives because it is not in most westerners' material interests to have these perspectives so chances we do because of fucking serendipity and maybe some tangent class benefits. We have to understand our personal class limitations before we can hope to understand the science of dismantling them. This instrospection is hard because... it is not in our class benefit.
However, we have made a case for ourselves that there are benefits scientifically (if not we will fall into reaction ourselves at the first moment of real personal crisis, just look at some artisan takes on AI for example) and we should similarly make the case for others but not ask other marxists to waste precious energy where it is not fruitful.
- you're just providing more evidence that you can't make the case for large swathes of USAmericans because they perceive to benefit more from capitalist society than a perceived socialist cause
- is there much of significant "mutual aid" in the US that was not just charity dressed up outside of maybe the Black Panther Party?
- and even then, Lenin:
I recall a conversation with one fairly thorough-going “economist” with whom I was not previously acquainted. We were talking about the pamphlet Who Will Carry Out the Political Revolution? and we quickly came to an agreement that its basic shortcoming was that it ignored the question of organization. We thus imagined that we were in complete solidarity — but… the conversation continued on its course and it turned out that we were talking about different things. My fellow conversationalist accused the author of ignoring strike funds, mutual aid societies and so forth, while I had in mind the organization of revolutionaries that was necessary for “carrying out” the political revolution. And, as soon as this disagreement made itself known — well, I can’t remember that I once agreed with this “economist” about any principled issue at all!
https://redsails.org/witbd-rs-abridged/#34-on-mutual-aid-and-red-tape
And how successful have you been? Why is it that there have been USAmerican marxists who are smarter, more charismatic and more daring than we are but have failed on the whole in the West in the sense of establishing a DOTP or even a reasonable nudge in that direction that wasn't due to the Global South? Why have the CPC abandoned as a main strategy exporting revolution ie what lessons did they learn from Soviet mistakes? What scientific theory of change do you propose that supercedes all of the above?
The way you reach people is to offer material benefits within the short term. If you can't make that case and understand why then you will resort to idealism.
It is do with their class perspectives on the world stage.
Nearly everyone believes in brainwashing but somehow they are exempt from it. "Brainwashing" (as we understand it in the West) is a CIA invention.
It may be worthwhile also looking up the science of how advertising actually works, for example. It is really difficult to convince someone against their perceived material benefits.
It is important as marxists that we understand this and focus our energy where it is worth it, and not get lost in metaphysical nonsense.
What are the strategic consequences of decisively rejecting the tripartite social theory advanced by Orwell, and adopting Marx's all-encompassing one instead? The basic call to action looks something like this:
- Stop accusing the masses of being "brainwashed." Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to "unpleasant truths."
- Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.
- Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.
- If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.
From Masses, Elites and Rebels: https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/
If it is any consolation, they are not brainwashed. They too could look up the truth (even just to understand the perspective of their "enemy"), like you did, but they intelligently (wilfull ignorance is a filtering skill albeit the malevolence) choose to look up bigoted narratives as they do their part of the capital machine, where they perceive to materially benefit from it.
Till the day, if ever, the narrative of socialist solidarity offers them a greater material benefit than the current perspective they will dig their heels harder. The effort on your part to make that case may or may not be worth it; you may have bigger fish to fry.
A lot of us come from (extended or otherwise) families infected with the rot of imperialism and colonialism; it is from this furnace our iron is cast.
Addendum - Finkelstein and crocodile tears (start from around 30 sec):
...Fanon, how he observed that colonialism dehumanizes the colonized and the colonizer. Torturerers and butchers and slavers traumatize and twist themselves into inhuman things...
^This. Fanon's decolonial science cuts deep. If the generations after are brought up in the same material conditons they too will be in the same mold as their murderous ancestors. However, I don't believe it is set in stone; the dialectics between the person and their environment is significant, not withstanding epigenetics can change within a lifetime and has a complex relationship with phenotype.
I wonder how long before we have another Luigi where ICE gets iced (I have no shame).
Or the Kotel
Not for lack of trying.
They have always been at war - hot or cold. If it becomes nuclear because of the stakes involved for the surrounding countries due to fallout risk (depending on potential target sites) there may be attempts at intervention from them (ie China, through diplomatic channels, not further war).
Right now it will be a further license for war crimes and minority persecution (especially India not withstanding that Pakistan's military is pretty much an extension of US foreign policy). Any further significant austerity measurements by the central Indian government to feed its own military-indsutry-complex for this will likely lead to further instablity and domestic population protest/strikes. In Pakistan, it will galvanise the return of Imran Khan (good thing) if the current Pakistani government is not careful.
(It difficult to ascertain concretely what Pakistan would have gained from doing this and given Western modus operandi I would not be surprised if this a false flag but that is conjecture at this point. We need to await further evidence to know either way.)
It must be remembered that civilians doing tourism were killed (albeit in a state that is more or less open air prison where Indian soldiers are pretty much given free license to perpetuate ongoing crimes against humanity). And that fact will dial up the Hindutva fervor to 11.
For you and everyone else lurking with similar query: learn theory and be dialectical in your approach.
Still visual media? Learn colour theory, compostition, light etc Then tie that in with theory of media you are analysing and the history of where the art is from and what it what trying to depict, including which classes produced it and which classes' perception it is reflecting.
Same for music, literature, films etc. In doing so you will develop your own tastes and also be better educated in analysis. If you learn enough chances you will produce your own as part of that learning process.
Read broadly. You will likely need to read a bit a about philosophy including marxist critiques on Nietzsche especially when it comes to the arts.
As your knowledge grows it will be easier to learn new stuff building on previous things; learning the interconnectedness not just within the arts but with also outside of the arts (history, geopolitics, philosophy, hard sciences etc) will make it so much easier to learn and enjoy.
Also because this is ML forum:
- https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2022-01-20-To-save-the-arts-we-must-kill-the-artist.html
- https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2021-03-06-Who-is-the-author-and-how-do-i-kill-him.html
- https://polclarissou.com/boudoir/posts/2023-02-03-Artisanal-Intelligence.html
Addendum, a potential starting point - A Marxist Theory of Art by Red Pen:
You are right but as a westerner I am being increasingly disillusioned by other westerners; our class on the world stage slows down our progression. My frustration is probably projection on my part as a labor aristocrat with conflicting priorities. I suspect despite a lack of coherent theory a lot of comrades here on these forums are probably doing significantly more than I am IRL. (Heck I wanted to do a deep dive article into nations/genders as effective classes but it has been ages and I still have not found the time to do it.)
Thanks for your patience and diligence. These vibes-based-luddite posts/comments were initially surprising to see on an ML thread but now it just feels pathetic, there's only so many ways one can explain this stuff; it's clear that artisans are having reactionary takes as they fear proletarianization.
(I really don't understand why this is so hard to understand; it's such a basic aspect of marxism and capital that the more I see this stuff on lemmygrad the more I feel like I am outgrowing lemmygrad from an ML perpective. Honestly your posts are like 90% why I am still hanging around.)
It is the result of competing US capital factions on how to maintain and expand the failing US hegemony. Trump's personal reasons may be argued as the incompetence in believing in US exceptionalism and even perceived beneficial bonuses such as stock insider-trading but if we are to move away from Great Man Theory we must ask why does the system allow him to do what he does?
Consider the opposite, what if Trump decided to create a dictatorship of the proleteriat (this is a thought exercise, not the presumption that Trump is a secret marxist)? The system including the reactionary masses would end it very quickly. It clearly does not do that with what's happening with the tariffs.
Tariffs in this context are a desperate measure where the end result is a tax on the domestic population to create state revenue along with attempts as bargaining chips (well outright brinkmanship), not just with the Global South with view to isolate and subjugate China, but also as political theater for domestic audience to create a convenient narrative for their bigotry (whether they agree with the tariffs or not, the US population is broadly sinophobic because of perceived material benefits) including to sell deepening austerity measures.
We may argue that they are hastening the self-destruction of the US and therefore cannot be "rational" but that argument could be made for capitalism in itself - we know it sows the seeds of its own destruction and yet it attempts to perservere.
I care not for the uniform but the content; it is why I do not consider "Western Marxists" of various stripes, locations and ethnicities as communists.
Religions often reflect the economic systems and class struggles; actual socialist forms of the religion would have been threat to the capitalism and feudal vestiges of the Holy See as an (European) institution. Sometimes it feels like if one really believed in a benevolent god then they would become a socialist but then I realise this is an idealistic non-materialistic approach to understanding humanity.
You have to remember a lot of them are from petite-bourgoisie or relative labour aristocracy so will reflect those class interests; their defence of capital and with that the local flavor of fascism manifested here as Hindutva. They really are losers in multiple sense of the word. As Paulo Friere has written the oppressed find in their model of "manhood" in the oppressor; there is no true salvation without socialism.
In the interim, fight the fascists.
Zionism is deeply antisemitic against jewish peoples too; for Zionists the only valid Jew is the fascist one and thereby carries out one of the axioms of western imperialism - the only truly valid "minority" is the fascist one (see for example, the erasure of communist ukrainians for fascist ones, communist Indonesians for fascist ones, and same for other East Europeans, South Americans etc)
Book recommendation - Stalin: The History and Critique of a Black Legend by Domenico Losurdo.
It would have been better if liberation theology was the more de facto institutional catholicism.