"Maoist Rebel News" and Third Worldism debunked

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

If you are not already familiar with the Maoist Rebel News brand, then it will suffice to say here that it first began as a Youtube video channel whose scope was to provide current events analysis from an ostensibly Marxist perspective. It is maintained by a Canadian man named Jason Unruhe, who upholds a pseudo-revolutionary political doctrine known as “Third Worldism”, or “Maoism-Third Worldism”. In this critique, offered from an authentically revolutionary left-wing perspective, I will demonstrate why this erroneous political line (which is by no means exclusive to Jason Unruhe’s Maoist Rebel News) is not what it purports to be. It is neither a coherent nor scientific worldview.

Claiming to be Youtube’s “#1 Marxist” for six years running, Unruhe is perhaps more of a public face for “Third Worldism” than anyone else in the Anglosphere. This is especially true since followers of the “Third Worldist” line generally place a high value on anonymity.

The use of campy aliases like “Serve the People” and text-to-voice software in propaganda messages are ubiquitous strategies of “Third Worldist” security culture. Ostensibly these measures are taken to mitigate the risks associated with being identified by the surveillance state, lending credence to their pretensions of being “serious” revolutionists–but it is also likely that in not divulging basic elements of their “real” identities, “Third Worldists” avoid revealing the awkward fact that, like leading proponents of “Third Worldism” Jason Unruhe and “Prairie Fire” (the self-described “Commander” of the Leading Light Communist Organization [LLCO], which Unruhe is a fellow-traveller of, hailing it as “the preeminent Third Worldist organization”), most “Third Worldists” are actually denizens of the so-called “First World”, making them, by their own definition, bourgeois (1).

Continued at http://wp.me/p6jQ1y-at (https://danielkbuntovnik.wordpress.com/2015/12/19/on-maoist-rebel-news-and-the-folly-of-ultraleftism-third-worldism/)

Comrades, what does y'all say about this?

[Aslan]

MRN is a moron and an absolute idiot. I'm sad that of all the communists in the world, he is the one people will first look at. A super-tankie who supports the worst dictatorship in the world and acts like a teenager to haters. His comment section is an echo-chamber of other tankies.

Third-Worldism is a load of bullshit as well. I could go into a long tangent about how it is absolutely stupid. However; most people already know how many times it has be debunked.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I'm not a third worldist, but let's be fair here - there are much better sources for characterizing the ideology than a moron with a youtube channel. For instance, you can hate on the Spartacists, but grounding your critique on your experience rebuffing one douchebag selling Worker's Vanguard will be fairly limited. Likewise, you can hate on primitivists, but grounding your critique on your dialogue with one hippie living under a bridge will also be limited.

[John Nada]

Jason Unruhe almost completely wrong on everything as usual. But the author isn't much better. For example both seem oblivious to the existence of peasants, including their supposed labor ari$tocrat ally, or democratic tasks that take exceptional importance in the Third-World. A shame, I was expecting a brutal take down.:(

Mao Zedong and Lin Biao were not writing about maximum programs for proletarian socialist revolutions or minimum programs for nations that already are bourgeois "democracies". In nations like pre-revolution China or much of the Third-World where feudalism and colonialism remain, the minimum program(demands leading to a DotP) is for a bourgeois-democratic revolution, or as it was renamed by the 2nd congress of the Comintern, the national-democratic revolution. Very much considered revolutions, even going back to Marx(who said communists must support these too).

An example is the February Revolution(Russia's bourgeois-democratic revolution) which fulfilled the Bolshevik's minimum program for a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry(fucking mouthful). Overthrowing the Tsar and ridding Russia of absolutism is not a "concession". Alone it was a step up. But dual power was also won, which set things up for the maximum program for proletarian-socialist revolution, establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. Hardly a "reform".

None of the bourgeois-democratic revolutions, including Russia's bourgeois-democratic revolution, the February Revolution, were "reforms". It directly attacked semi-feudalism, and the newly established capitalism it was supposedly capitulating to was mortally threaten from the get-go by socialist revolutions. Ditto to for the new democratic revolution and people's democratic dictatorship in China. Simply because in theory the national-bourgeoisie can be revolutionary in fulfilling this tasks relative to feudalism and imperialism(like in England, US and France), doesn't me it will or the proletariat must align with it. Far from it, usually the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry must do it instead, against a bourgeoisie too dependent on imperialism. From there, the proletariat and its party can moving as quick as possible towards the maximum program of socialist revolution.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Hi Juan, I agree there is some confusion about what a revolution is and what it is not, and the meaning of the term "concession" is stretched a bit. But at the same time (although that was in the context of the February Revolution in Russia) maybe there is something to be said for the description of an empire cutting free a colony as a concession. At some point the metropole calculates its losses and makes the decision to grant independence/withdraw its claim to control, maybe before it has exhausted its capacity to make an effort of retaining the colony. From what I understand there have been a few cases of peaceful decolonization. Do you think that the revolutionary failures in Russia and to an extent in China can be attributed to flawed minimum programs? How much does the Chinese bourgeoisie depend on imperialism? Do small-scale and subsistence farmers today stand to gain something from allying with their national capitalists?

[John Nada]

Hi Juan, I agree there is some confusion about what a revolution is and what it is not, and the meaning of the term "concession" is stretched a bit. But at the same time (although that was in the context of the February Revolution in Russia) maybe there is something to be said for the description of an empire cutting free a colony as a concession. At some point the metropole calculates its losses and makes the decision to grant independence/withdraw its claim to control, maybe before it has exhausted its capacity to make an effort of retaining the colony. From what I understand there have been a few cases of peaceful decolonization. Do you think that the revolutionary failures in Russia and to an extent in China can be attributed to flawed minimum programs? How much does the Chinese bourgeoisie depend on imperialism? Do small-scale and subsistence farmers today stand to gain something from allying with their national capitalists?A lot of the decolonization was neither revolutions nor decolonizing. Many of the "revolutions" were merely coups while retaining imperialism. Economic exploitation and essentially declaring de jure independence yet leaving everything, including essentially the same local colonial rulers, the same could barely be called a reform, let alone a revolution(a class overthrowing another class). In a lot of cases, possibly most, those nations are still neo-colonies(pretty much still colonies except on paper) or semi-colonies(political autonomy yet economic domination by imperialists). Something analogous to the "Prussian Path"(feudal classes gradually becoming comprador-bourgeoisie at the expense of peasants and workers, while retaining some semi-feudal features) or the "American Path"(violent revolution overthrowing the reactionary classes, colonialism and pre-capitalist productive relations) https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1907/agrprogr/ch01s5.htm

To overthrow this neo-colonialism and semi-colonialism, it would take a revolution led by the proletariat. In the age of imperialism it won't just peacefully grow out of imperialist-capitalism. This is as good as it gets. It's actively holding back subjugated nations in an underdeveloped state. There countries economies are not geared towards development(most will never "catch up" to the imperialists), but towards extracting profits at the behest of imperialist nations.

Imperialism props up a local comprador-bourgeoisie, state bureaucracy and feudalistic classes like big landowners. These reactionary classes have a vested interest in aiding superexploitation of "their own" nation. The leaders may occasionally talk anti-imperialism, even launch "color revolutions" and coups against other factions, but will go along or get taken out via coups or "humanitarian" interventions. Without imperialism they would be nothing. These classes have zero interest in even bourgeois-democratic revolutions, let alone committing class suicide. The peasantry will gain nothing from them or even the middle-bourgeoisie.

It'd take a revolution led by the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry(particularly the poor peasantry and semi-proletariat) to break free from imperialism and possibly move as quick as possible towards a socialist revolution. The middle national bourgeoisie and petit-bourgeoisie, particularly among intelligentsia, might side with the proletariat but wavers between wanting to fight imperialism or just becoming a new comprador-bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, this national-bourgeoisie is too compromised to carry out bourgeois-democratic revolutions. Often it might be completely reactionary and just want to be the new comprador-bourgeoisie. The proletariat and especially its parties must always be in command and never liquidate itself and become subservient to this national-bourgeoisie. Dog wag the tail, not the tail wagging the dog which usually ends in disaster.

On nations that actually did have revolutions against imperialism and even attempted socialist revolutions, I'd say it's mostly failed. A lot of them reverted back to semi-colonies in counterrevolutions. Russia and China's bourgeois-democratic revolutions were in some ways a success. Neither are particularly dependent on imperialists and actually imperialist themselves. Though unfortunately the proletarian-socialist revolutions completely failed.

Yet I'm not sure there was much they could do. Jumping ahead from semi-feudalism to a dictatorship of the proletariat is much harder than if it were in a bourgeois-"democracy" like the US or UK. Proletariat's likely over 50% vs. under 25% in either Russia and China. The Bolsheviks and CCP were entering uncharted territory. Both fucked up bad a lot. I'd say at times could've gone further down the socialist path, other times slow down.

Really in imperialist-capitalist countries like the US, it'd be way more ideal for revolution, contrary to Jason Unruhe. Fucking minimum programs basically for socialist revolution. None of this confusing shit about how to handle the peasantry or other democratic measures, just straight up DotP.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

On the one hand you have the Marxist definition of revolution necessarily entailing the overthrow of one class by another, and on the other hand you have the popular or mainstream definition which says that it's simply something like the overthrow of a government by mass demonstrations/riots. I've heard some convincingly make the argument that the American Revolution was really more of a coup d'état; that it was actually the intensification of imperialism at a moment where the British were flirting with the idea of establishing an "Indian barrier state" in the Northwest of the Ohio River Territories after the Royal Proclamation from 1763 recognized native land claims for the first time. And the British transfer of land in the same area to Quebec was another inhibition on imperial expansion. So the American Revolution was hardly anti-imperialist. The Marxist definition also begets some "strange" historical interpretations, such as the view that the US Civil War was actually a "revolution".

However, going back to the case of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and more specifically the February Revolution; why is it illegitimate to view Nicholas II's abdication as a concession? When Nicholas II resigned as tsar, he originally planned to nominate his son, and then reconsidered due to his hemophilia, and nominated Grand Duke Mikhail to be the next tsar. Nicholas II perhaps thought that this concession would be enough to save tsardom, and the fact that he bypassed his son in the royal secession for a stronger candidate would indicate that he expected this system to be preserved. And even though the Grand Duke declined, the first leader of the provisional government was still a royal. If the provisional government had somehow won out over the soviets, would the bourgeois-democratic revolution have been as thorough? I think we could see the February Revolution as more of radical reform, and the October Revolution as the point at which "revolution" as such really began to kick in. Although it proclaimed itself to be a proletarian revolution, in the long term it resulted in quite a thorough destruction of semi-feudalism and the creation of a modern capitalist class.

It might be interesting to compare the February Revolution with the Romanian Revolution of 1989, which some have also painted as being in actuality a coup d'état. Ion Iliescu, who ruled from 1989-1996 and 2000-2004, had been a member of the Romanian Communist Party's Central Committee since 1965. But maybe this was a sort of bourgeois-democratic revolution? Interestingly, subsistence and semi-subsistence farming has actually increased here since 1989...

It seems to be the mainstream view that Romania's "Antifascist Revolution of August 23, 1944" was actually a coup d'état led by the King, with the support of Communists and peasants' organizations, against the fascist dictator Ion Antonescu. If it was the former, that would make it a "degenerated" workers' state while the latter would make it more of a "deformed" one, where Stalinism was imposed from without by the occupying Soviet forces.

[John Nada]

I just noticed. That blog appears to have been written by Lacrimi de Chiciură.:unsure: Sorry if it appears like I'm being too harsh. Nobody deserves to be even remotely compared to an Unruhe.:oAlthough the fact that none of those third-worldist even brought up anything like my criticisms based entirely on Marxism(with Unrule citing anti-communist compradors like Nehru) is telling.

Third-worldism is undialectical and empiricists(even their favorites Zak Cope and Samir Amin). It contradicts Marx's law of value. Nobody actually in the 3rd-world believes in 3rd-worldism, with all actual struggles written off as First-Worldist as a result.
On the one hand you have the Marxist definition of revolution necessarily entailing the overthrow of one class by another, and on the other hand you have the popular or mainstream definition which says that it's simply something like the overthrow of a government by mass demonstrations/riots. I've heard some convincingly make the argument that the American Revolution was really more of a coup d'état; that it was actually the intensification of imperialism at a moment where the British were flirting with the idea of establishing an "Indian barrier state" in the Northwest of the Ohio River Territories after the Royal Proclamation from 1763 recognized native land claims for the first time. And the British transfer of land in the same area to Quebec was another inhibition on imperial expansion. So the American Revolution was hardly anti-imperialist. The Marxist definition also begets some "strange" historical interpretations, such as the view that the US Civil War was actually a "revolution".Beside USA's War of Liberation being the beginning of a nightmare for Indigenous peoples, [email protected] and African-Americans, the local classes remained mostly intact. It couldn't have fought imperialism in the Marxist sense, since it was actually the Spanish-American War that herald the imperialist phase of capitalism. However, even some bourgeois historians considered the American Civil War basically the completion of the US's revolution.
However, going back to the case of the Russian Revolution of 1917, and more specifically the February Revolution; why is it illegitimate to view Nicholas II's abdication as a concession? When Nicholas II resigned as tsar, he originally planned to nominate his son, and then reconsidered due to his hemophilia, and nominated Grand Duke Mikhail to be the next tsar. Nicholas II perhaps thought that this concession would be enough to save tsardom, and the fact that he bypassed his son in the royal secession for a stronger candidate would indicate that he expected this system to be preserved. And even though the Grand Duke declined, the first leader of the provisional government was still a royal. If the provisional government had somehow won out over the soviets, would the bourgeois-democratic revolution have been as thorough? I think we could see the February Revolution as more of radical reform, and the October Revolution as the point at which "revolution" as such really began to kick in. Although it proclaimed itself to be a proletarian revolution, in the long term it resulted in quite a thorough destruction of semi-feudalism and the creation of a modern capitalist class.At the time, Lenin considered the February Revolution basically a bourgeois-democratic revolution of against the Tsar. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/tasks/ch01.htm#v24zz99h-057-GUESS Also:
This transformation has been started by the February–March Revolution of 1917, the first stage of which has been marked, firstly, by a joint blow at tsarism struck by two forces: one, the whole of bourgeois and landlord Russia, with all her unconscious hangers-on and all her conscious leaders, the British and French ambassadors and capitalists, and the other, the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, which has begun to win over the soldiers’ and peasants’ deputies.[2] (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/lfafar/first.htm#fwV23E128)

(https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/lfafar/first.htm#fwV23E128)
These three political camps, these three fundamental political forces—(1) the tsarist monarchy, the head of the feudal landlords, of the old bureaucracy and the military caste; (2) bourgeois and landlord-Octobrist-Cadet Russia, behind which trailed the petty bourgeoisie (of which Kerensky and Chkheidze are the principal representatives); (3) the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, which is seeking to make the entire proletariat and the entire mass of the poorest part of the population its allies—these three fundamental political forces fully and clearly revealed themselves even in the eight days of the “first stage” and even to an observer so remote from the scene of events as the present writer, who is obliged to content himself with the meagre foreign press dispatches.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/lfafar/first.htm

It started back to the Revolution of 1905, followed by the counterrevolution from 1907 onward. Due to WWI with millions dead, on and off guerrilla warfare since the failed revolution in 1905 and insurrections by the workers(both killing thousands), the bourgeoisie in alliance with the bourgeois landlords forced out the Tsar establishing a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the form of the Provisional Governement. A revolution in the superstructure, perhaps this is part of the confusion?

But at the same time there was still the risk of counterrevolution by the Tsarists. And yet the workers on the ground had real power in the form of the Soviets. Lenin considered this the Revolutionary-Democratic Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Peasantry. Dual power with the democratic dictatorship side by side with the bourgeois dictatorship. Unideal for all side, according to Lenin.

This unstable alignment of the superstructure and base, a bourgeois-"democratic" state with the proletariat and peasantry imposing a revolution from below, could either go towards a bourgeois-state of some kind(which the proletariat would still fight all the same), possibly with a counterrevolution, restoration of absolutism and even proto-fascism(which the White Counterrevolutionaries would've been), or a proletarian socialist revolution(which it did in the October Revolution) with the risk of capitalist restoration(which happened).

In the end, the proletarian-socialist side was wildly successful at consolidating the gains, sweeping away feudalism and even aiding wars of national liberation. When you think about it, all this will make future socialist revolutions easier. But sadly the socialist side was all lost in a slow motion counterrevolution, IMO starting around WWII with millions of Communist cadre killed.
It might be interesting to compare the February Revolution with the Romanian Revolution of 1989, which some have also painted as being in actuality a coup d'état. Ion Iliescu, who ruled from 1989-1996 and 2000-2004, had been a member of the Romanian Communist Party's Central Committee since 1965. But maybe this was a sort of bourgeois-democratic revolution? Interestingly, subsistence and semi-subsistence farming has actually increased here since 1989...

It seems to be the mainstream view that Romania's "Antifascist Revolution of August 23, 1944" was actually a coup d'état led by the King, with the support of Communists and peasants' organizations, against the fascist dictator Ion Antonescu. If it was the former, that would make it a "degenerated" workers' state while the latter would make it more of a "deformed" one, where Stalinism was imposed from without by the occupying Soviet forces. I'll have to look into this more. I think it's more complex than either "degenerate/deformed workers' state" or "people's democracies/revisionist state capitalist". It's hard to just draw straight analogies to France or Russia.

But I'd say no, Romania was already state capitalist by then. The RPR is probably about what would've happened if the October Revolution got crushed like the Paris Commune under the not-as-bad scenario. Unless Ceausescu, with the help of Kosygin and Brezhnev, personally carried out a proletarian socialist revolution turning the Romanian people's democracy into a dictatorship of the proletariat:lol:.

That coup was just the bourgeoisie finishing off a drawn out counterrevolution in progress for decades. Good news though is Romania just needs a socialist revolution. Unless there's still lords/ladies, princes/princesses, tribal chieftains, clergy, clan patriarchs, slave masters, ect oppressing the peasantry in the countryside. Ceausescu and the NSF that overthrew him would've had to fuck up big time.:lol:

[KurtFF8]

acts like a teenager to haters.

I genuinely thought that the guy who does MRN was a teenager. Is he actually an adult?

Anyway, I was unaware that MRN was taken seriously by enough people that it needed to be debunked in the first place.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

I just noticed. That blog appears to have been written by Lacrimi de Chiciură.:unsure: Sorry if it appears like I'm being too harsh. Nobody deserves to be even remotely compared to an Unruhe.:oAlthough the fact that none of those third-worldist even brought up anything like my criticisms based entirely on Marxism(with Unrule citing anti-communist compradors like Nehru) is telling.

No worries, ;)


Nobody actually in the 3rd-world believes in 3rd-worldism, with all actual struggles written off as First-Worldist as a result.

Exactly. After Unruhe's response to my blog post, he wrote this piece about "the importance of self-criticism" where, ironically, he only criticizes "First Worldists" and says how "Third Worldists" are better because they are supposedly more critical of the Third World's left-wing social movements...because they aren't Third Worldist.

In case anybody missed it, Maoist Pewdiepie made two attempts at refuting the original post (the first one was retracted):

In response to Jason Unruhe’s second attempt at a rebuttal of my critique (https://danielkbuntovnik.wordpress.com/2015/12/20/in-response-to-jason-unruhes-second-attempt-at-a-rebuttal-of-my-critique/)


Beside USA's War of Liberation being the beginning of a nightmare for Indigenous peoples, [email protected] and African-Americans, the local classes remained mostly intact. It couldn't have fought imperialism in the Marxist sense, since it was actually the Spanish-American War that herald the imperialist phase of capitalism. However, even some bourgeois historians considered the American Civil War basically the completion of the US's revolution.

Thinking about Marx's theory of history and the astronomical/astrological etymology of the term "revolution" here. Why do we not consider that revolution is not one class overthrowing another class, but the overthrow of class(ism) itself? Lumping together the class societies, as encompassed in the phrase "socialism or barbarism", might then help clear up some of the ambiguity around certain socio-political transition events being either coups or revolutions.

The emergence of "barbarism", class, and slave society was not revolutionary but an evolutionary development, as a class cannot be overthrown in a classless society. With the development of feudalism and capitalism we see the emergence of new class antagonisms and middle classes striking blows against their superiors; however only socialist revolution can be called revolution in the true sense of the word. Socialism represents revolution because it is the completion of a cycle, returning us back to communism, albeit no longer primitive, but advanced communism. Furthermore, the distinctions between the classist epochs are not so clear-cut. Capitalism is still a slave society; not only because of wage slavery but there's also a lot of outright violent domination of generally dishonored persons, and the large prison populations. Capitalism also still has semi-feudal elements. Empires rose and fell long before capitalism reached its imperialist stage. If socialist revolution is our New Year's party (when we mark the completion of one revolution of the Earth around the Sun--the time it takes to leave and then return to an arbitrary point on Earth's orbital plane--just as socialist revolution marks the completion of a social cycle away from and back to communism, so-called bourgeois-democratic revolutions are more akin to Samhain (festival which marks the beginning of winter, or as Jack Barnes would say, "Capitalism's Long Hot Winter Has Begun").


That coup was just the bourgeoisie finishing off a drawn out counterrevolution in progress for decades. Good news though is Romania just needs a socialist revolution. Unless there's still lords/ladies, princes/princesses, tribal chieftains, clergy, clan patriarchs, slave masters, ect oppressing the peasantry in the countryside. Ceausescu and the NSF that overthrew him would've had to fuck up big time.

Effectively, in the Russian context, being for the defense of the so-called "bourgeois-democratic revolution" after February (March) 1917 meant being counterrevolutionary in terms of the proletarian-socialist revolution. I feel the question now is, has globalization gotten to the point where endorsement of bourgeois-democratic "decolonization" (which can really only produce semicolonialism or even new imperialist powers) is actually counterrevolutionary to the proletarian-socialist objective of decolonization? Or something like that.


I genuinely thought that the guy who does MRN was a teenager. Is he actually an adult?

Anyway, I was unaware that MRN was taken seriously by enough people that it needed to be debunked in the first place.

His Youtube channel has almost 19k subscribers.

[Vee]

I genuinely thought that the guy who does MRN was a teenager. Is he actually an adult?

Anyway, I was unaware that MRN was taken seriously by enough people that it needed to be debunked in the first place.

i believe he is in his late 20s or 30s.

[John Nada]

Exactly. After Unruhe's response to my blog post, he wrote this piece about "the importance of self-criticism" where, ironically, he only criticizes "First Worldists" and says how "Third Worldists" are better because they are supposedly more critical of the Third World's left-wing social movements...because they aren't Third Worldist.

In case anybody missed it, Maoist Pewdiepie made two attempts at refuting the original post (the first one was retracted)I don't think 3rd-worldism should be approached as Maoist. It's different from Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong thought, or even just Marxism-Leninism. The concept of imperialism, oppressed/oppressor nations, national question, role of the party, phases of revolution, classes, law of uneven development, ect. are different. They call it "scientific" but it's just revisionism that employs demagoguery. "Left" in form but right in essence.

I think part of the problem is a lot of the left in the 1st-world haven't paid enough attention to the theory of a labor aristocracy and the possibility that both the labor aristocracy and petit-bourgeoisie may be a significant minority in imperialist nations. So the 3rd-worldist(ironically only found in the 1st-world) are filling that vacuum with a revisionist theory that the entire 1st-world is a labor aristocracy, and thus have to wait till a global revolution proletarianizes them for revolutions. Like Kautsky's idea that semi-feudal nations like Russia should've waited a hundred years or more till the petit-bourgeoisie majority is proletarianized, but in the mean time uphold bourgeois-"democracy" so the bourgeoisie(with the help of imperialism) can carry out that nightmare of primitive accumulation. Then and only then, the proletariat might vote them out of office.:laugh: It's kautskyism ass-backwards!
Thinking about Marx's theory of history and the astronomical/astrological etymology of the term "revolution" here. Why do we not consider that revolution is not one class overthrowing another class, but the overthrow of class(ism) itself? Lumping together the class societies, as encompassed in the phrase "socialism or barbarism", might then help clear up some of the ambiguity around certain socio-political transition events being either coups or revolutions.Don't think of things progressing as a straight line or circle. It's dialectical. It moves in zigzags. Like Engels said, view changes as a spiral.

The contradictions between classes is the motor of history. Tribal society was negated by ancient slavery, which was negated by feudalism, then that by capitalism. Now the next qualitative phase will either be the negation of classes altogether(full communism), or barbarism(fascism, nuclear war or climate change killing off most of humanity, that neo-feudal shit so-called "Libertarians" want).
The emergence of "barbarism", class, and slave society was not revolutionary but an evolutionary development, as a class cannot be overthrown in a classless society. With the development of feudalism and capitalism we see the emergence of new class antagonisms and middle classes striking blows against their superiors; however only socialist revolution can be called revolution in the true sense of the word. Socialism represents revolution because it is the completion of a cycle, returning us back to communism, albeit no longer primitive, but advanced communism. Furthermore, the distinctions between the classist epochs are not so clear-cut. Capitalism is still a slave society; not only because of wage slavery but there's also a lot of outright violent domination of generally dishonored persons, and the large prison populations. Capitalism also still has semi-feudal elements. Empires rose and fell long before capitalism reached its imperialist stage. If socialist revolution is our New Year's party (when we mark the completion of one revolution of the Earth around the Sun--the time it takes to leave and then return to an arbitrary point on Earth's orbital plane--just as socialist revolution marks the completion of a social cycle away from and back to communism, so-called bourgeois-democratic revolutions are more akin to Samhain (festival which marks the beginning of winter, or as Jack Barnes would say, "Capitalism's Long Hot Winter Has Begun").Each phase was a revolution and "progressive" compared to the previous mode of production. Slavery is worse than serfdom, and serfdom is worse than wage-labor. Agriculture was a step up from hunter-gathers, and industry was a step up from small-scale agriculture and petty-production. The dictatorship of slave masters was overthrown by the dictatorship of monarchs and nobles, and that dictatorship was overthrown by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Simply because it was pretty fucked up for the old ruling class(in the main the French Revolution was not nice for the nobility) and the new oppressed classes doesn't change that it was a progression.

Each builds off the previous. Like a barley seeds growing, harvested, fermented and ending in me being qualitatively wasted:D. So each mode of production builds upon the older mode of production. It will have some characteristics of the past, with a superstructure even having "echos from the past"(like religions or customs). Like Engels wrote:
It is the same in history, as well. All civilised peoples begin with the common ownership of the land. With all peoples who have passed a certain primitive stage, this common ownership becomes in the course of the development of agriculture a fetter on production. It is abolished, negated, and after a longer or shorter series of intermediate stages is transformed into private property. But at a higher stage of agricultural development, brought about by private property in land itself, private property conversely becomes a fetter on production, as is the case today both with small and large landownership. The demand that it, too, should be negated, that it should once again be transformed into common property, necessarily arises. But this demand does not mean the restoration of the aboriginal common ownership, but the institution of a far higher and more developed form of possession in common which, far from being a hindrance to production, on the contrary for the first time will free production from all fetters and enable it to make full use of modern chemical discoveries and mechanical inventions. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch11.htm

Capitalism enabled productive forces to potentially advance towards abundance never before seen, and the productive relations have made people engage in cooperative social labor like never before. I'd be unimaginable to have this very discussion under feudalism. While it's fucked up and reactionary to uphold capitalism now that it has fulfilled it's progressive mission, it laid the foundation for its own demise and the rise of a new mode of production that can end oppression and provide necessities for all.

And while there was a proto-imperialism in the past, it did not yet encompass the globe. Due to capitalism's uneven development(capitalism didn't pop up at the same time everywhere), in a few dominate nations capitalism has grown from a progressive force to a reactionary monopoly that must superexploit (semi/neo)colonies just to thwart off capitalism's demise. Imperialist capitalism is no longer a progressive force, and in the peripheral not building the oppressed nations up, but keeping them down. If the people of the subjugated nations try to develop the economy, implement progressive programs or even damn near vote in socialism, it's subordinated to imperialist-capitalism.

The people from the oppressed nations are then oppressed both by local imperialist-backed tyrants and the monopolies from the imperialist centers. This both strengthens the bourgeoisie in the dominate nation and weakens the proletariat and poor peasantry in the subjugated nation. Bad for the proletariat and peasantry, so any blow against imperialism and the semi-feudal base it maintains is a victory for the proletariat and oppressed peoples.
Effectively, in the Russian context, being for the defense of the so-called "bourgeois-democratic revolution" after February (March) 1917 meant being counterrevolutionary in terms of the proletarian-socialist revolution. I feel the question now is, has globalization gotten to the point where endorsement of bourgeois-democratic "decolonization" (which can really only produce semicolonialism or even new imperialist powers) is actually counterrevolutionary to the proletarian-socialist objective of decolonization? Or something like that.Unity of opposites. An offensive has a defense, and vis versa. A revolution also has a counterrevolution.

In the case of Russia, in addition to the absurdity of implementing a god knows how long ceasefire with an imperialist-bourgeoisie and voluntarily playing the role of the san-culottes(massacred by the bourgeoisie and all), like the Mensheviks and Kautskites wanted. The Bolsheviks needed to fight imperialism too. Russia was an imperialist empire oppressing many colonized nations. Staying in the war meant defending the Allied Powers' colonial empires too and the massacre of more workers and peasants in an unjust reactionary war.

And that dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, in spite of implementing some democratic measure, killed thousands of workers and peasants and was at risk of a counterrevolution. Upholding that dictatorship of the bourgeoisie would've either made Russia an imperialist colony like China or India, or a fascist power. Going by what happened when Germany failed to move towards a dictatorship of the proletariat after overthrowing the Kaiser, I could see it being a nightmare. As bad as it may have been in the Stalinist era, imagine either the imperialist doing to Russia what they did to China, India, the Philippines and Africa, or fascist Russia siding with the Axis.

On the globalization, I think it's still possible to fight imperialist capitalism and is just. I don't buy the Kautskyite arguments that seem to be making a comeback that the oppressed nations have to wait for the imperialist-bourgeoisie to develop advance capitalism in the neo-colonies, which is likely never. Nor do I think 90% or the proletariat must wait for that 10% in the imperialist centers to launch a revolution. Both can have revolutions.

Is a world like this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_1914_empires_colonies_territory.PNG)(wi th much of the "independent" parts really semicolonies) really progressive and better for a proletarian socialist revolution, in both the dominate and subjugated nations? If fighting this is reactionary, then it'd be progressive for imperialists to invade and enslave more nations because "gets rid of petty-commodity production and develops productive forces" and "it unites the workers and peasants".:laugh:

I'd argue what's around now is a step up from before wars of liberation like in Vietnam. Even though many are still semi-colonies, their higher degree of autonomy will make an imperialist blockade like in past revolutions much harder. Those countries will have a much easier time having a socialist revolution.

And it's very unlikely for most semi-colonies to be imperialist, because the uneven development and semi-feudal bases are kept in place by imperialism. That's why in Latin America you have the haciendas and a bourgeoisie almost the same as the landlords. The corrupt clientele bureaucracies in a bunch of "ex"-colonies not unlike the tribalism. Castes like in India. The bureaucratic-bourgeoisie, landowners, nobility and clergy ruling nations, like in a lot of the Middle East. From these you get the Mobutus, the Sauds and sham "anti-imperialists" like Daesh.

Some might become expansionist, like India, Brazil, Iran, Saudi Arabia or Turkey, but most will not. In fact their expansionism is driven by imperialist-capitalist abroad. Though it's conceivable that another re-division might make new imperialists, like with Russia or China. This is just shuffling around slaves, not a progressive development of capitalism in the neo-colonies. Because that's what imperialism is, capitalism at its highest stage.

I wouldn't get hung up on the "bourgeois" part of what's sometimes called the bourgeois-democratic revolution. It's a bit of an archaic term that often pops up in Marxist literature. It's revolutions in semi-feudal, (semi/neo-)colonial nations. They often don't have a significant proletariat, still have both capitalist and feudalistic features, underdeveloped industry and a lack of bourgeois-"democratic" rights like in much of the west that could help organizing. It just a minimum program for underdeveloped nations, but still tied to the maximum program of socialist revolution and a DotP.

In the 20th century onward it's rarely been carried out by the bourgeoisie. They are for all practical purposes revolutions led by the proletariat, just in alliance with the peasantry and petit-bourgeoisie, who through no fault of their own, haven't yet been proletarianized due to imperialism. Because why sit back and wait for the imperialist to finish another enclosure, when the proletariat can help them on better terms? It's just obvious that countries like Afghanistan, Peru or Nigeria are going to have different minimum programs than Denmark or the Netherlands.

When I say it has nearly always either been a sham independence or counterrevolution, I don't mean the previous attempts were in vain. Not anymore than attempted socialist revolutions in imperialist countries. Rather a lot of the decolonizing was more a controlled devolution of powers that handed power to local colonial administrators. Imperialist like Britain mostly used indirect rule anyway.

They were saddled with debt, and the infrastructure was build to supply their imperialist masters. A lot of the state bureaucracy, comprador-bourgeoisie, tribal chiefs, clergy, intelligentsia, landowners and military were still "loyal" to the imperialist. And by then the USSR or the PRC were social imperialist who only wanted the resources and wouldn't help either. So even if a few national-bourgeoisie leaders genuinely opposed imperialism, there was nothing they could do or they got overthrown. And if the communist parties and proletariat mistakenly tailed them, usually went down too.

The solution is a revolution led by the proletariat. The proletariat can be the leading force in alliance with the other oppressed classes. But in spite of the name "bourgeois-democratic", the revolution must not be led by the bourgeoisie. Might even want to keep them the fuck away. Then the proletariat can move to a socialist revolution, almost right away.

[KurtFF8]

His Youtube channel has almost 19k subscribers.

That is quite bizarre indeed. I wonder who it is that actually watches his videos considering he is in no way an actual part of the Left.


i believe he is in his late 20s or 30s.

Really? I would have guessed a teenager based on some of the videos of his that I've seen.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Hey Juan Moreno,
First of all, excuse the massive delay in repyling. Haven’t been ‘round these parts much as of late. I did want to get back to you on a few things though and there was plenty of food for thought in your last post. At least the thread is still on the first page!



Thinking about Marx's theory of history and the astronomical/astrological etymology of the term "revolution" here. Why do we not consider that revolution is not one class overthrowing another class, but the overthrow of class(ism) itself? Lumping together the class societies, as encompassed in the phrase "socialism or barbarism", might then help clear up some of the ambiguity around certain socio-political transition events being either coups or revolutions.
Don't think of things progressing as a straight line or circle. It's dialectical. It moves in zigzags. Like Engels said, view changes as a spiral.

The contradictions between classes is the motor of history. Tribal society was negated by ancient slavery, which was negated by feudalism, then that by capitalism. Now the next qualitative phase will either be the negation of classes altogether(full communism), or barbarism(fascism, nuclear war or climate change killing off most of humanity, that neo-feudal shit so-called "Libertarians" want).

Yes, but spirals are still quite circular. However, they are also represented as (curved) line segments. If the spiral representing social evolution was a physical object that you could pick up, like a necklace or a khipu cord (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quipu)which marked social revolutions and new stages of development with knots in the cord, you could straighten it out and the same line, now straight, would represent the same events marked at equidistant locations along the same cord, in straight linear form now rather than curved linear form. So the spiral metaphor is actually an attempt at synthesis of the thesis of straight line and the antithesis of circle or curved line. What information, if any, is lost in straightening the cord or connecting its ends to make it a proper circle? Maybe we must surpass this paradigm.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ca3Yx3TUUAAze02.jpg:large

In naming the prehistoric social organization of humans “primitive communism” and the system we want to instaure “[advanced] communism”, Marx and Engels laid the groundwork for a model that is fundamentally based in circularity. The spiral does work in a way to capture the nuance of primitive vs. advanced--the “changing same”. But, because primitive communism is represented in the spiral metaphor as being at the center of the circle and advanced communism sits at the circle’s circumference, it does not capture the idea of return/renewal--advanced communism and primitive communism are at opposite ends of the circle’s radius--making these two communisms further apart, more dissimilar to each other than advanced communism is to any of the class systems between it and its primitive brother. In other words, the spiral places communism closer to slavery than to communism. Strange.

The word “radical” also has anti-spiral connotations; it captures the sense of going back to “the root”, the center of the circle and reconnecting the loose ends of primitive and advanced communism.

The spiral emphasizes the changing at the expense of the same. Do we demand common ownership simply because it is technologically determined to be possible? What then do we do if a solar flare wipes out our mechanical inventions or if barbarism triumphs and wipes out our chemical discoveries? I think even in that situation we must continue to be radical. I am not sure that I agree with Engels’ assessment that primitive communism was a hindrance to production, and by extension, a hindrance to advance (in other words that we needed slavery to advance ourselves). Supposing that early humans had developed a stronger system of ethics, which would not necessarily require mechanical invention or chemical discovery, but be based more in the development of nonmaterial culture (language and communication), we could have made it to advanced communism from primitive communism without ever passing through class society. Of course, history is what it is and now we have to deal with the sordid turn of development in our species, but to argue otherwise is technological determinism. Furthermore, if we re-establish global communism before the last “uncontacted tribes” are contacted, colonized, or wiped out, these societies or individuals issued from them will be able to integrate directly from primitive communism into advanced communism.

One alternative which I quite like is Caribbean poet Kamau Brathwaite’s concept of tidalectics. (Tide/tidal + dialectics). It is about ebb and flow, slow and steady wearing away, and drastic tidal waves. Brathwaite also captures the alterity which I think the first person to apply the word “revolution” to politics was getting at--much as revolutions have always taken society by surprise, been seen as something out of human control as much as the moon’s revolution around the Earth is beyond our control--the sea is like outer space in its otherness and inhospitality, earth even being a synonym for the land.




The emergence of "barbarism", class, and slave society was not revolutionary but an evolutionary development, as a class cannot be overthrown in a classless society. With the development of feudalism and capitalism we see the emergence of new class antagonisms and middle classes striking blows against their superiors; however only socialist revolution can be called revolution in the true sense of the word. Socialism represents revolution because it is the completion of a cycle, returning us back to communism, albeit no longer primitive, but advanced communism. Furthermore, the distinctions between the classist epochs are not so clear-cut. Capitalism is still a slave society; not only because of wage slavery but there's also a lot of outright violent domination of generally dishonored persons, and the large prison populations. Capitalism also still has semi-feudal elements. Empires rose and fell long before capitalism reached its imperialist stage. If socialist revolution is our New Year's party (when we mark the completion of one revolution of the Earth around the Sun--the time it takes to leave and then return to an arbitrary point on Earth's orbital plane--just as socialist revolution marks the completion of a social cycle away from and back to communism, so-called bourgeois-democratic revolutions are more akin to Samhain (festival which marks the beginning of winter, or as Jack Barnes would say, "Capitalism's Long Hot Winter Has Begun").
Each phase was a revolution and "progressive" compared to the previous mode of production. Slavery is worse than serfdom, and serfdom is worse than wage-labor. Agriculture was a step up from hunter-gathers, and industry was a step up from small-scale agriculture and petty-production. The dictatorship of slave masters was overthrown by the dictatorship of monarchs and nobles, and that dictatorship was overthrown by the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Simply because it was pretty fucked up for the old ruling class(in the main the French Revolution was not nice for the nobility) and the new oppressed classes doesn't change that it was a progression.

But what really makes each phase “revolutionary”? Let’s imagine that primitive communism is at the inner end of our spiralled cord, maybe the transition to slave-based barbarism occurs at only half a rotation. In the transition to feudalism to capitalism, somewhere at the middle of the line, there is no social rotation because the last do not become the first; the middle classes merely usurp the old upper classes. We might call them coups, tidal waves, advances, transitions, maybe they are even “revolutionary”--but whether they are actually “revolution”, I am still skeptical.

[Luís Henrique]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ca3Yx3TUUAAze02.jpg:large

http://ideias.wdfiles.com/local--files/memes/modos%20de%20produ%C3%A7%C3%A3o.png

Luís Henrique

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

Although I'm not subscribed to him, I do watch his videos quite regularly.

It's infuriating, because sometimes he actually has very good points to make. His videos he did on the utter bullshit of Austrian economics is quite possibly one of the best 'fuck yous' to AnCaps ever made.

But then he completely destroys any of that goodwill by filtering it through his MTW bullshit as well as his own personal prejudices. His constant DPRK apologism, his dogmatism (despite the fact he thinks dogmatism is the biggest problem in modern ML discourse), his childish insults, and his inability to take criticism don't help either.

[BIXX]

Isn't he the guy who accused all of revleft of being pedophiles

He should have called revleft "wreckedleft"

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

Luís Henrique, can you help me understand your flowchart?

Did you make a connection between tidalectics and Wittfogel's ideas about "hydraulic empire" and the "Asiatic mode of production"?

Why does the "Germanic way" bypass a slavery-based mode of production and what makes it different from the "Ancient way"?

Is it saying that capitalism can either progress into some unknown or into "Asiatic mode"? and what does the shorter and shorter dotted line represent?

[Aslan]

The so-called ''Germanic way'' is bullshit, Germanic tribes often took Celts and other tribes as thralls. Then either used them for labor or The ''Asiatic'' m.o.p is also strange, since it is so much of vast overgeneralization. Is Japan's economy the same as India? What about Persia? Or the economy of Islamic nations?

[Luís Henrique]

Luís Henrique, can you help me understand your flowchart?

I can certainly try.


Did you make a connection between tidalectics and Wittfogel's ideas about "hydraulic empire" and the "Asiatic mode of production"?

Ha, ha, no, it didn't cross my mind. No, Wittfogel's concern was to explain a given set of societies, while, if I correctly understand, the "tidalectics" are about a model for the historic interconnection between different kinds of society (which is also what I tried to do with my chart, which proposes something that is not unilinear as the Stalinist "khipu cord", but is also isn't circular or spiraling: a "branched" model, perhaps*).


Why does the "Germanic way" bypass a slavery-based mode of production and what makes it different from the "Ancient way"?

The differences between the three "ways" are differences in the manner in which the primitive classless society disintegrates. But the idea here is not that the "Germanic way" bypasses slavery, rather that the classless societies undergoing the Germanic way historically collided with class societies of the slave-based kind, resulting in an original kind of society, feudalism.


Is it saying that capitalism can either progress into some unknown or into "Asiatic mode"? and what does the shorter and shorter dotted line represent?

Nope; the vertical lines should be read as one given kind of society influencing others (Germanic tribes invade and destroy slave-lords States, capitalism destroys "Asiatic" societies by either colonial invasion or by imperialist influence). The dotted line would mean some kind of withering away; it is perhaps a bad way to represent it, but what happens is that "Asiatic" societies are turned into capitalist societies outside-inside.

Luís Henrique

* This "branched" model is based on Marx's famous text known as "Formen", and retains the main problems with that text (the very imprecise notion of "Asiatic mode of production", and the absence of a fourth branch, that of what I would call the "nomadic herder" way (which is quite interestingly described by Perry Anderson in his Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism)).

[Luís Henrique]

* This "branched" model is based on Marx's famous text known as "Formen", and retains the main problems with that text (the very imprecise notion of "Asiatic mode of production", and the absence of a fourth branch, that of what I would call the "nomadic herder" way (which is quite interestingly described by Perry Anderson in his Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism)).

Here is the relevant excerpt from the Formen:


Another form of the property of working individuals, self-sustaining members of the community, in the natural conditions of their labor, is the Germanic. Here, the member of the community as such is not, as in the specifically oriental form, co-owner of the communal property.

(Where property exists only as communal property, the individual member as such is only the possessor of a particular part of it, hereditary or not, for any fraction of property belongs to no member for himself, but only as the direct part of the community, consequently as someone in direct unity with the community and not as distinct from it. The individual is therefore only a possessor. What exists is only communal property and private possession. Historic and local, etc., circumstances may modify the character of this possession in its relation to the communal property in very different ways, depending on whether labor is performed in isolation by the private possessor or is in turn determined by the community, or by the unity standing above the particular community.)

Neither is the land [in the Germanic community] occupied by the community as in the Roman, Greek (in brief, the ancient classical) form as Roman land. Part of it [that is, in classical antiquity] remains with the community as such, as distinct from the members, ager publicus in its various forms; the remainder is distributed, each plot of land being Roman by virtue of the fact that it is the private property, the domain, of a Roman, the share of the laboratory which is his; conversely, he is Roman only in so far as he possesses this sovereign right over part of the Roman soil.

Luís Henrique