Rawthentic
19th June 2009, 19:30
Comrade RedFlags posted a reply to a post on Kasama here:http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=95482805898&h=6vLRd&u=NbiIu&ref=nf
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You’re onto something there, Koba.
These descendants of Sam Marcy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Marcy) have a structural vision of socialism (or, more accurately anti-imperialism since not even they could claim the Iranian ayatollahs are socialists) that is fundamentally hostile to the agency of people, proletarian or otherwise. The Marcyites don’t just understand the theocratic gangs beating protesters in Tehran, they celebrate any tank driven by an authoritarian regime to mow down people opposing it.
Marcyism is the ideology of structures against people, it is the essence of mechanical materialism and, in this case at least is plainly reactionary and must be condemned.
In their despair, the Party of Socialism and Liberation (http://www.pslweb.org/site/PageServer) (PSL) thinks the people actually hate socialism and, like the East German authoritarians mocked by Brecht (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht), they continually seek to “dissolve the people” and elect them anew… under tank treads.
Marcyites formerly took special pride defended the atrocities of once-socialist states that lost popular legitimacy (such as the Warsaw Pact countries, capitalist China or the monarchy in Korea).
Now they cuddle up to various “brown” forces in Eastern Europe and Islamic reactionaries. It’s a truly surreal neo-Trotskyism that grafts a Platonic philia for the “deformed” or “degenerated workers states” onto any government in contradiction with US imperial hegemony.
If socialism is an Ideal form, always beyond the realm of the real, and always “flawed” when real – then this “Trotskyism” is that which seeks to find the necessary structure to support, with literally no regard for the actual social relations involved. It’s a true fetish for the primary contradiction, in this case imperialism, which is the equivalent of teaching young communists how not to think, that confuses thinking itself for liberalism. And while there is no real danger of these ideas taking a mass form (on the left) in the United States, it can do great damage within the communist movement, and among progressive and anti-imperialist forces, by training young militants in how not to think. It’s the commie equivalent of “they hate us for our freedom”.
PSL’s politic is an ersatz ecumenicalism that fails to “know our friends, know our enemies.”
Sam Marcy’s theory obscures and even denies the difference between revolution and counter-revolution. Marcyites enable and run PR for reactionaries, from the former secret police of East Germany to Li Peng when he murdered the students in Tienanmen Square, to the military Derge regime in Ethiopia and now on to the ayatollahs of Iran. There is no monster they won’t crown.
It will be the death of the communist movement to the extent this red/brown (which is to say socialist/fascist) mentality gets by, just as it was the actual death of Iranian communists at the hands of the actual ayatollahs. PSL may justify these murderers, but the only danger these politics pose is to a communist alternative – NOT US imperialism.
Sam Marcy developed his Global Class War theory, where nations are “proletarian” regardless of their relations of production or social reproduction, explicitly in support of the Soviet suppression of a complex uprising in 1956 Hungary.
The Marcyites look all over the world for tanks crushing crowds, where the state as such drives over people asserting popular sovereignty. That’s where the Marcyites see themselves: driving the tank! It’s a manic structuralism that takes no account of people’s conscious participation, equating popular agency itself with liberalism! And they are wrong! Marcyism is hostile to people, and hostile to any vision of socialism where the people actually hold power. The Marcyites upport only what they perceive to be structural barriers to US hegemony, regardless of how those barriers are themselves the canals through which power flows in the 21st Century. And regardless of the politics, class composition or living reality of those they “support”. Sometimes they support the good guys, but even then from mechanical habit and not actual affinity.
PSL politics is counter-revolution born in despair, misanthropic and out of time. Communists must assume their responsibilities, not pretend they have none.
Like the European fascists of LePen or the Ron Paul morons here in the USA, Islamists need a globalized imperialist foil to justify their own petty privileges and power – just as that globalized imperialism in turn needs them. This symbiotic relationship, Sometimes short-handed as “Jihad vs. McWorld”, the symbiotic relationship between “local” reactionaries and “global” elites has utterly eluded the Marcyites who think the world is stuck 50 years ago.
The Party of Socialism and Liberation (as well as the Workers World Party it split from) have a misanthropic, proto-fascist vision of what socialism means. They don’t celebrate the masses in struggle, rather the tanks that defend reified states in the same of sovereignty. There is no crime that can’t be justified using their logic, and in fact they gravitate to such crimes because it is the essence of their politics. This is Stasi Socialism, which is to say deracinated fascism.
Overturning this whole reactionary dynamic is our duty as communists; not to choose among the world’s reactionaries, but to represent the future in the present. We must put red flags on the ground. We communists must never become apologists for anti-democratic, anti-people regimes. Or we are worse than lost, we would be our own worst enemies.
******
Let's discuss this, get into it. Let's expose the nature of those counterrevolutionaries supporting reactionary regimes against the people.
Unfortunately, I'm about to leave and will be out for most of the weekend.
And all I want to say is, fuck fake "communists" and all power to the people.
***************
You’re onto something there, Koba.
These descendants of Sam Marcy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Marcy) have a structural vision of socialism (or, more accurately anti-imperialism since not even they could claim the Iranian ayatollahs are socialists) that is fundamentally hostile to the agency of people, proletarian or otherwise. The Marcyites don’t just understand the theocratic gangs beating protesters in Tehran, they celebrate any tank driven by an authoritarian regime to mow down people opposing it.
Marcyism is the ideology of structures against people, it is the essence of mechanical materialism and, in this case at least is plainly reactionary and must be condemned.
In their despair, the Party of Socialism and Liberation (http://www.pslweb.org/site/PageServer) (PSL) thinks the people actually hate socialism and, like the East German authoritarians mocked by Brecht (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bertolt_Brecht), they continually seek to “dissolve the people” and elect them anew… under tank treads.
Marcyites formerly took special pride defended the atrocities of once-socialist states that lost popular legitimacy (such as the Warsaw Pact countries, capitalist China or the monarchy in Korea).
Now they cuddle up to various “brown” forces in Eastern Europe and Islamic reactionaries. It’s a truly surreal neo-Trotskyism that grafts a Platonic philia for the “deformed” or “degenerated workers states” onto any government in contradiction with US imperial hegemony.
If socialism is an Ideal form, always beyond the realm of the real, and always “flawed” when real – then this “Trotskyism” is that which seeks to find the necessary structure to support, with literally no regard for the actual social relations involved. It’s a true fetish for the primary contradiction, in this case imperialism, which is the equivalent of teaching young communists how not to think, that confuses thinking itself for liberalism. And while there is no real danger of these ideas taking a mass form (on the left) in the United States, it can do great damage within the communist movement, and among progressive and anti-imperialist forces, by training young militants in how not to think. It’s the commie equivalent of “they hate us for our freedom”.
PSL’s politic is an ersatz ecumenicalism that fails to “know our friends, know our enemies.”
Sam Marcy’s theory obscures and even denies the difference between revolution and counter-revolution. Marcyites enable and run PR for reactionaries, from the former secret police of East Germany to Li Peng when he murdered the students in Tienanmen Square, to the military Derge regime in Ethiopia and now on to the ayatollahs of Iran. There is no monster they won’t crown.
It will be the death of the communist movement to the extent this red/brown (which is to say socialist/fascist) mentality gets by, just as it was the actual death of Iranian communists at the hands of the actual ayatollahs. PSL may justify these murderers, but the only danger these politics pose is to a communist alternative – NOT US imperialism.
Sam Marcy developed his Global Class War theory, where nations are “proletarian” regardless of their relations of production or social reproduction, explicitly in support of the Soviet suppression of a complex uprising in 1956 Hungary.
The Marcyites look all over the world for tanks crushing crowds, where the state as such drives over people asserting popular sovereignty. That’s where the Marcyites see themselves: driving the tank! It’s a manic structuralism that takes no account of people’s conscious participation, equating popular agency itself with liberalism! And they are wrong! Marcyism is hostile to people, and hostile to any vision of socialism where the people actually hold power. The Marcyites upport only what they perceive to be structural barriers to US hegemony, regardless of how those barriers are themselves the canals through which power flows in the 21st Century. And regardless of the politics, class composition or living reality of those they “support”. Sometimes they support the good guys, but even then from mechanical habit and not actual affinity.
PSL politics is counter-revolution born in despair, misanthropic and out of time. Communists must assume their responsibilities, not pretend they have none.
Like the European fascists of LePen or the Ron Paul morons here in the USA, Islamists need a globalized imperialist foil to justify their own petty privileges and power – just as that globalized imperialism in turn needs them. This symbiotic relationship, Sometimes short-handed as “Jihad vs. McWorld”, the symbiotic relationship between “local” reactionaries and “global” elites has utterly eluded the Marcyites who think the world is stuck 50 years ago.
The Party of Socialism and Liberation (as well as the Workers World Party it split from) have a misanthropic, proto-fascist vision of what socialism means. They don’t celebrate the masses in struggle, rather the tanks that defend reified states in the same of sovereignty. There is no crime that can’t be justified using their logic, and in fact they gravitate to such crimes because it is the essence of their politics. This is Stasi Socialism, which is to say deracinated fascism.
Overturning this whole reactionary dynamic is our duty as communists; not to choose among the world’s reactionaries, but to represent the future in the present. We must put red flags on the ground. We communists must never become apologists for anti-democratic, anti-people regimes. Or we are worse than lost, we would be our own worst enemies.
******
Let's discuss this, get into it. Let's expose the nature of those counterrevolutionaries supporting reactionary regimes against the people.
Unfortunately, I'm about to leave and will be out for most of the weekend.
And all I want to say is, fuck fake "communists" and all power to the people.