Left communists on Third Worldism

  1. Pogue
    Pogue
    I know I already have a thread with questions in it running already but this is something I particularly wanted answers on from you guys because of the recent emergence of this ideal on here as well as the fact you guys emphasise internationalism.

    What are left communist's responses to third wordlist theories? Like the idea that first world workers have become to comfortable as a result of better conditions and consumerism? The idea that it would take a revolution throughout the third world nations first to end mega expolitation of the third world, meaning there is more of a balance in living standards world wide, making people more radical or 'desperate' in the first world?
  2. Gustav HK
    Gustav HK
    I think that maoism-thirdworldism is a very anti-marxist theory (and i think, that the other left-communists agree with me).

    The three-world theory is extreme national liberation, the third worldists go away from the theory of class struggle and over to the theory of struggle between nations.
    For them a national bourgeois from a third world country is better than a worker from a first world country.

    I donĀ“t know if all third worldists are so extreme as in this video, but in this video they want a great world war between the third world countries and the first world countries.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28AI_...eature=channel

    That makes it clear, that they are psychopats that wants hundred of millions of workers to kill each other, and not fighting against the world bourgeoisie.

    Third worldism is therefore an anti-marxist, bourgeois theory.
  3. Alf
    Alf
    Agree with the last post. The first thing to say about third worldism is that I've neer seen a version of it which really supported the struggle of the workers in the 'third world', but supports the nationalist bourgeois movements whch are always part of imperialist conflicts. Maoism is the classic expression: it began its life with the Stalinist theory of the 'bloc of four classes' and by delivering the insurgent workers of Shanghai into the hands of the Kuomintang in 1927.
    http://en.internationalism.org/iccon...ina-march-1927

    On the more theoretical level, the basic error is that workers in the advanced countries are in some sense 'exploiting' the workers of the third world, whereas the capitalists exploit both! The workers in a US factory are just as exploited in marxist terms as workers in the worst sweatshops in India - only the method of extracting surplus value tends to be 'relative' in the more advanced country (based on more developed technology and thus higher productivity) and 'absolute' in the third world country (based on extremely long working day, etc). The workers in both cases have every interest in uniting against their common exploiters - the third worldists serve only to strengthen divisions that can only benefit the exploiters.

    But keep posing the questions and we will keep trying to answer them!
  4. Pogue
    Pogue
    what do you feel about the idea that the first world workers are too comfortable with their lives under capitalism to have a revolution though? i'd like your guys perspecive on this, i have my own answers but you guys emphasis absolute class unity and internationalism, the opposite of third worldism so would like to hear your responses
  5. Samyasa
    Samyasa
    what do you feel about the idea that the first world workers are too comfortable with their lives under capitalism to have a revolution though? i'd like your guys perspecive on this, i have my own answers but you guys emphasis absolute class unity and internationalism, the opposite of third worldism so would like to hear your responses
    I, for one, never feel comfortable when my rent is due! It's true, of course, that most workers in the first world don't suffer the horrendous conditions prevalent in the third world. But that doesn't mean the situation is a bed of roses for workers here either.

    For those "fortunate" enough to have a mortgage, the burden of repayments is enormous with thousands in the UK being repossessed even in the boom times. See figure below. Needless to say the more recent figures are even more drastic.



    In 2006 over a quarter of homes in England were deemed "non-decent", that is they failed to meet statutory requirements regarding repair, heating, etc. Over 33,000 people live in bed & breakfast accommodation due to the lack of social housing.

    On employment, in the UK, in 2008 there 3.9 million people who wanted to be in paid work but weren't. 40% of jobseekers (i.e. people who make an unemployment claim) who find work are out of work again in 6 months.

    I could bore you with many more factoids but the real poison of "third-worldism" is the division it sets up between sectors of the proletariat. Of course, there is nothing unique about that! At the moment, in the UK, there is a truly poisonous campaign aimed at presenting public sector workers as "well-off" in comparison to their private sector counterparts. The main fact used to support this campaign is the fact that, so far, the public sector has retained its final-salary pension schemes while most other sectors have cut theirs dramatically. And yet, despite supposedly being more "comfortable", the public sector workers have been among the most militant in recent years.

    So there's no direct connection at all between the "comfort" of different sectors of workers and their militancy, just as there is no mechanical relationship between crisis (which obviously increases poverty and "desperation") and class struggle.

    In fact, the things that seem to really weigh on the struggle are the ideological domination of the bourgeoisie and form of its governmental apparatus. It's the use of democracy, unionism, etc. in the "first world" that acts as the principle blockage to the class struggle. The reason why the struggle in the third world often takes such dramatic and violent forms is precisely the lack of all these sophisticated social shock absorbers. However, this lack of experience in confronting these more subtle forms of repression also leaves workers in these areas more vulnerable to their influence. This is why even very militant class upsurges in these regions often take on democratist forms and are recuperated by the bourgeoisie.
  6. PeaderO'Donnell

    That makes it clear, that they are psychopats that wants hundred of millions of workers to kill each other, and not fighting against the world bourgeoisie.

    .
    Given the way that people on this forum use disgusting and dehumanizing words like **** on a regular basis and that other openly admit as adults to play computer games I think psychopathy in the west goes way beyond "Moaist Third Worldists". Compare twisted minds who openly joke about child sex abuse such as "Comrade Joe" to AvanteRedGuard....

    However the fact is that the war between the first and the third world has already started....And it wasnt the third world that has started it.

    Millions of workers and their families are being killed by hunger, easily preventable dieases, lack of clean drinking water...and other preventable causes when they are not being butchered by "the Toms" in direct military interventions such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico, Palestine, etc...All to pay for your computer games, cocaine, manga cartoons and all the rest of that good old first world fun.

    Real internationalists dont come out with nonsense about their "class struggle" being the cause of their abundance and not the super exploitation of the third world.

    Again the war has started.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgZ5k...eature=related

    This video is a bit tacky but it contains much valuable information.
  7. MilitantWorker
    MilitantWorker
    And where the fuck do you live? What do "third-worldists" who live in first world countries do? Kill themselves? Thats really gonna get humanity places. I mean, really.

    Millions of workers and their families are being killed by hunger, easily preventable dieases, lack of clean drinking water...
    And why do these things happen? Because I eat fruity pebbles and watch lost occasionally?

    And one more thing. The average 'first world' worker doesn't have it good at all. If as a working class American, I decided to stop working (which means no income, no healthcare) I would be facing starvation and disease too. Did you know that 40% of Americans fall below the poverty line at least once in a 10 year period? Did you know that the chance an American will change social classes in his/her lifetime is only 7%? And most of those people most likely moved down, not up...
  8. Alf
    Alf
    H-L-V-S: are you not forgetting about the economic crisis, which tends to undermine all illusions in a comfortable future for workers in all countries?
  9. black magick hustla
    black magick hustla
    Given the way that people on this forum use disgusting and dehumanizing words like **** on a regular basis and that other openly admit as adults to play computer games I think psychopathy in the west goes way beyond "Moaist Third Worldists". Compare twisted minds who openly joke about child sex abuse such as "Comrade Joe" to AvanteRedGuard....

    However the fact is that the war between the first and the third world has already started....And it wasnt the third world that has started it.

    Millions of workers and their families are being killed by hunger, easily preventable dieases, lack of clean drinking water...and other preventable causes when they are not being butchered by "the Toms" in direct military interventions such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico, Palestine, etc...All to pay for your computer games, cocaine, manga cartoons and all the rest of that good old first world fun.

    Real internationalists dont come out with nonsense about their "class struggle" being the cause of their abundance and not the super exploitation of the third world.

    Again the war has started.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgZ5k...eature=related

    This video is a bit tacky but it contains much valuable information.
    THe fact is that third worldism is just a phenomenon in American Universities and no person who calls himself a marxist, or hell, even a maoist, in the third world says that nonsense. Thirdworldism is silly and it was a product of 60s newleft kids who dropped too much acid. It is also thirdworldists who support the most awful murder gangs like sendero luminoso, or barbaric reactionaries like the murderious mullahs of the iranian state.
  10. black magick hustla
    black magick hustla
    What is with you first world maoists and your depiction of the third world. Has anyone of you gone to Mexico city, or any urban area in some third world countries. Or Istambul, or Ankara? You would find out, that unfortunately for your chauvinist depictions of them, mexico is the second fattest country and working class people watch television and in some places, like mexico city, 50 percent of them have access to internet in their homes. Japanese cartoons are imported in the public television and some of them were sensations between working class youth. You people are disgustingly ignorant and chauvinistic and I bet you think people in Mexico all wear sombreros and ride donkeys.
  11. Bilan
    Bilan
    Marmot, your comments don't really give much depth to the criticism of Third-Worldism. I don't think Third-Worldism is accurate (I agree it's utter nonsense), but I don't think acid is the cause. More chauvinism and ignorance of the development and nature of capitalism, than 'acid' and what have you. Third Worldists fetishize the image of modern capitalism, rather than actualities of it. They also negate class analysis, in favour of border-line chauvinistic politics of liberation of the oppressed, which usually means 'people of colour'.
    It's also national, rather than class based politics.

    I think, also, that the programs of the different (official) communist parties (which split over their support for Russia and China, e.g. the CPA's split) are a much more important, and fundamental factor in the birth of these politics.

    In summary, it was born in the realm of bourgeois, nationalist ideology.
  12. black magick hustla
    black magick hustla
    Marmot, your comments don't really give much depth to the criticism of Third-Worldism. I don't think Third-Worldism is accurate (I agree it's utter nonsense), but I don't think acid is the cause. More chauvinism and ignorance of the development and nature of capitalism, than 'acid' and what have you. Third Worldists fetishize the image of modern capitalism, rather than actualities of it. They also negate class analysis, in favour of border-line chauvinistic politics of liberation of the oppressed, which usually means 'people of colour'.
    It's also national, rather than class based politics.

    I think, also, that the programs of the different (official) communist parties (which split over their support for Russia and China, e.g. the CPA's split) are a much more important, and fundamental factor in the birth of these politics.

    In summary, it was born in the realm of bourgeois, nationalist ideology.
    :shrugs:, obviously I marmotified by analysis (i.e. deconstruct it to the point of banality) but the thing is that maoist third worldism is an american phenomenon that, while Pabloites and orthodox maoists might look similar to them, they do not come to that extreme. When I meant "students dropping acid" I tried to mean, elements of the decomposition of the petty bourgeois under decadent conditions.
  13. Pogue
    Pogue
    H-L-V-S: are you not forgetting about the economic crisis, which tends to undermine all illusions in a comfortable future for workers in all countries?
    Not forgetting anything as i am posing a question.
  14. Pogue
    Pogue
    Given the way that people on this forum use disgusting and dehumanizing words like **** on a regular basis and that other openly admit as adults to play computer games I think psychopathy in the west goes way beyond "Moaist Third Worldists". Compare twisted minds who openly joke about child sex abuse such as "Comrade Joe" to AvanteRedGuard....

    However the fact is that the war between the first and the third world has already started....And it wasnt the third world that has started it.

    Millions of workers and their families are being killed by hunger, easily preventable dieases, lack of clean drinking water...and other preventable causes when they are not being butchered by "the Toms" in direct military interventions such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Mexico, Palestine, etc...All to pay for your computer games, cocaine, manga cartoons and all the rest of that good old first world fun.

    Real internationalists dont come out with nonsense about their "class struggle" being the cause of their abundance and not the super exploitation of the third world.

    Again the war has started.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgZ5k...eature=related

    This video is a bit tacky but it contains much valuable information.
    lol