One thing I see a lot with the Trumpen and Putin/RT lefts and I guess I should add the Assad and Xi Jinping left is a lot of time spent lecturing actual revolutionary Marxists on stuff the actual revolutionary Marxists already know...like that the Democrats are capitalist and imperialist (ya don't say), that the US is an imperial warmonger (for real?), and so on. I think the constant lecturing and re-lecturing --- as if they think they deserve Lenin or Chomsky Prizes for figuring these very basic radicalism 101 things out ---- is partly about the constant need to set up recurrent un- and even anti-Marxist defenses of butchers like Putin...to make the what-aboutist argument which says that Russia gets to rape and kill in Bucha cuz of what the USA did in Fallujah and in Bola Boluk and in Vietnam and so on. No, we don't denounce the horrific crimes of the top dog imperialist aggressor state in order to justify crimes and aggression by lower dog capitalist-imperialist states. This bullshit really has to stop. A lot of the folks writing on "the left" need to take a long hard look in the mirror and also stop reflexively dismissing what they hear from the revcoms and other smart folks. I wrote a whole five part series here on how completely ridiculous and frankly pathetic and conservative much of the US left has become . I came at that topic from many angles including the whole liberal left thing including the progressive Dem Bernie-AOC angle and the super woke identitarian angle. I took a hard look at anarchism. It was an equal opportunity smackdown and I stand by it all. Folks really, really need to level up. What I regularly see now on "the left" just isn't remotely good enough. And then there's all the giving up and retreating into self. Come on people. Start your engines.
It's heart rendering, depressing, absurdity that runs through my thoughts as I try (but fail) to understand what Washington and its many think tank sycophants come up with next to justify their actions in Ukraine and elsewhere. Also why the typical American just goes on with his/her daily routine in silent complicity as the neocons engage in continuous wars and continuous sanctions on black, brown and Asian nations. We are a horrible tribe us Americans.
I think that more than ever we should be working towards dialogue, not making more divisions between working people. All those news outlets have worthwhile and educational materials on their platforms. For example, Ray McGovern. Let us not forget how Putin came to power in Russia, after the destruction of the working class by the west. I guess the we I am referring to are those of us who collectively put this war in the context of the last 35 years.
Why do you specifiy working people?! Shouldn't all sentient beings, including the retired and unemployed and people fortunate enough to escape employment even before retirement age unite to overthrow capitalism-imperialism? Why the constant references to the working class? Don't get me wrong. My academic sub-field was labor history and I for years taught a course called the history of the American working class but doesn't it get tiresome this constant and recurrent reference to "the working class"? Spend much time in and around the working class?
We need socialist revolution for all humanity. How about the "we" being humanity?
What do you think of the slogan "It's this system that needs to go extinct, not humanity"? Of course one key idea of a socialist revolution is the proletariat being the objective class in state power, not the capitalists.....
It's a good slogan. I use the term because as producers of all wealth, the working class holds the power to change the world if we all work together for the public good. "Working class" doesn't preclude retired peoples or those who work in the home. The working class are all humanity. Thank you for bringing it up.
If the US would only follow the UN charter, this invasion would never had happened. As an American who came of age during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, I have seen the brutality of our permanent war state. And while I was taken aback when Putin invaded, I shouldn't have been surprised, even though 30 years of betrayals and attempts by Russia to befriend the West, went unheeded by the neoliberal war mongers. As an American, I saw what Clinton /NATO did to Yugoslavia. Don't we think Putin saw this, even what the corporate raiders did to the former Soviet states? As an American I watched as every country the US wanted to raid had a boogeyman, some with the dreaded WMDs.
It's not that we love Putin per se, but we are sick and tired of all the death and destruction over the last 500 years. We defy your characterization as Putin-lovers, but are looking forward to a world where countries might be free to chart their own courses, use their own currencies on the road to revolutionary socialist regional economies.
And, Washington prevented peace talks last April. This is a US war. And, as you say, what would the US do with missiles and provocations around our borders? Would they call for negotiations as Putin did so long before his brutal attack? Doubtful.
Who is "we" in your comment? Can't tell. In any event I share milliant opposition to the US Empire and the US NATO war in Ukraine with those I left because of their mental and moral sickness over Assad and Putin and who who look up to state-capitalist China, which they seem to think is socialist (it hasn't been since the counterrevolution after Mao's death). This multipolar stuff is really ridiculous in my (I guess not so humble) opinion. These countries you are talking about desperately need to organize for (inevitably at first nation-based) internationalist socialist revolutions, as do the people of the USA. Let us socialists and communists please get serious again and stop saying bizarre and revisionist, anti-revolutionary things about the supposed transformative potential of regional economies and currenncies and so forth. And let's develop new radar to sense fascism when it raises its head as it has all over the place including right here in the USA with Trumpism-DeSantisism-MTGism and the Republi-fascist Party, in Russia with Putin and other places. This pink-brown stuff I see all over the "left" Web stinks to high heaven. It is shameful, inexcusable.
One thing I see a lot with the Trumpen and Putin/RT lefts and I guess I should add the Assad and Xi Jinping left is a lot of time spent lecturing actual revolutionary Marxists on stuff the actual revolutionary Marxists already know...like that the Democrats are capitalist and imperialist (ya don't say), that the US is an imperial warmonger (for real?), and so on. I think the constant lecturing and re-lecturing --- as if they think they deserve Lenin or Chomsky Prizes for figuring these very basic radicalism 101 things out ---- is partly about the constant need to set up recurrent un- and even anti-Marxist defenses of butchers like Putin...to make the what-aboutist argument which says that Russia gets to rape and kill in Bucha cuz of what the USA did in Fallujah and in Bola Boluk and in Vietnam and so on. No, we don't denounce the horrific crimes of the top dog imperialist aggressor state in order to justify crimes and aggression by lower dog capitalist-imperialist states. This bullshit really has to stop. A lot of the folks writing on "the left" need to take a long hard look in the mirror and also stop reflexively dismissing what they hear from the revcoms and other smart folks. I wrote a whole five part series here on how completely ridiculous and frankly pathetic and conservative much of the US left has become . I came at that topic from many angles including the whole liberal left thing including the progressive Dem Bernie-AOC angle and the super woke identitarian angle. I took a hard look at anarchism. It was an equal opportunity smackdown and I stand by it all. Folks really, really need to level up. What I regularly see now on "the left" just isn't remotely good enough. And then there's all the giving up and retreating into self. Come on people. Start your engines.
It's heart rendering, depressing, absurdity that runs through my thoughts as I try (but fail) to understand what Washington and its many think tank sycophants come up with next to justify their actions in Ukraine and elsewhere. Also why the typical American just goes on with his/her daily routine in silent complicity as the neocons engage in continuous wars and continuous sanctions on black, brown and Asian nations. We are a horrible tribe us Americans.
I think that more than ever we should be working towards dialogue, not making more divisions between working people. All those news outlets have worthwhile and educational materials on their platforms. For example, Ray McGovern. Let us not forget how Putin came to power in Russia, after the destruction of the working class by the west. I guess the we I am referring to are those of us who collectively put this war in the context of the last 35 years.
Why do you specifiy working people?! Shouldn't all sentient beings, including the retired and unemployed and people fortunate enough to escape employment even before retirement age unite to overthrow capitalism-imperialism? Why the constant references to the working class? Don't get me wrong. My academic sub-field was labor history and I for years taught a course called the history of the American working class but doesn't it get tiresome this constant and recurrent reference to "the working class"? Spend much time in and around the working class?
We need socialist revolution for all humanity. How about the "we" being humanity?
What do you think of the slogan "It's this system that needs to go extinct, not humanity"? Of course one key idea of a socialist revolution is the proletariat being the objective class in state power, not the capitalists.....
It's a good slogan. I use the term because as producers of all wealth, the working class holds the power to change the world if we all work together for the public good. "Working class" doesn't preclude retired peoples or those who work in the home. The working class are all humanity. Thank you for bringing it up.
If the US would only follow the UN charter, this invasion would never had happened. As an American who came of age during the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement, I have seen the brutality of our permanent war state. And while I was taken aback when Putin invaded, I shouldn't have been surprised, even though 30 years of betrayals and attempts by Russia to befriend the West, went unheeded by the neoliberal war mongers. As an American, I saw what Clinton /NATO did to Yugoslavia. Don't we think Putin saw this, even what the corporate raiders did to the former Soviet states? As an American I watched as every country the US wanted to raid had a boogeyman, some with the dreaded WMDs.
It's not that we love Putin per se, but we are sick and tired of all the death and destruction over the last 500 years. We defy your characterization as Putin-lovers, but are looking forward to a world where countries might be free to chart their own courses, use their own currencies on the road to revolutionary socialist regional economies.
And, Washington prevented peace talks last April. This is a US war. And, as you say, what would the US do with missiles and provocations around our borders? Would they call for negotiations as Putin did so long before his brutal attack? Doubtful.
Who is "we" in your comment? Can't tell. In any event I share milliant opposition to the US Empire and the US NATO war in Ukraine with those I left because of their mental and moral sickness over Assad and Putin and who who look up to state-capitalist China, which they seem to think is socialist (it hasn't been since the counterrevolution after Mao's death). This multipolar stuff is really ridiculous in my (I guess not so humble) opinion. These countries you are talking about desperately need to organize for (inevitably at first nation-based) internationalist socialist revolutions, as do the people of the USA. Let us socialists and communists please get serious again and stop saying bizarre and revisionist, anti-revolutionary things about the supposed transformative potential of regional economies and currenncies and so forth. And let's develop new radar to sense fascism when it raises its head as it has all over the place including right here in the USA with Trumpism-DeSantisism-MTGism and the Republi-fascist Party, in Russia with Putin and other places. This pink-brown stuff I see all over the "left" Web stinks to high heaven. It is shameful, inexcusable.
Breaking: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/guide-understanding-hoax-century-thirteen-ways-looking-disinformation