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What article would that be?
This is all semantic drivel. It does mean something to be a US citizen, or a British citizen, or a French citizen. Citizens of those countries have access to employment, education, and social services that citizens of poorer countries do not, and as a result they also have greater access to material wealth. These facts can't be swept under the rug by simply labeling them as exploited. Capitalist exploitation is a real thing, but so is imperialist exploitation, and trying to ignore either doesn't help the situation at all.
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See my edited post.
Oh, imperialism is a real thing alright. This is why I and other Marxists-Leninists (Maoist and otherwise) support communist, anti-imperialist movements in the third world like the Naxalites or the Nepali maoists... which the LLCO deride as revisionist.
I'm still not seeing a source there.
I'm fairly sure they support the Naxalites, though they (rightly) disagree with the Prachandists and Chavistas that regulated capitalist development is the best path for their countries to take. I'm not really concerned who they call revisionist though, since that word is used too liberally to begin with.
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Here's the thread where the video was posted on Revleft. Just scroll down to Kléber's post. I guess since the video has been taken down since, you could argue that it's an elaborate ploy to defame MTWs and everyone in that thread was in on it, and the rest of us will simply snicker at you when you're not looking.
I'm no Chavist, but I'll admit I'm not up-to-date with the Nepali situation, though I'm fairly sure the Nepali maoists do not uniformly support Prachanda. I'm no expert, though.
Finally, something we can agree on.
Oh. It's not a video from the LLCO, but rather some guy on Youtube that has sympathies tending towards MTW. That doesn't really tell you anything about the LLCO's position. My guess would be they don't have a position on European austerity cuts at all. They certainly aren't above pointlessly inflammatory rhetoric and attacks on first world socialist movements, but I've never seen an official statement supporting the first world bourgeoisie either.
Well, he is the chairman of the CPN (M), but that aside, just about all the criticism coming from the LLCO/MSH towards to Nepalese Maoists has been directed at him and his supporters.
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"Third worldism" has nothing whatsoever to offer the left other than disruption and reaction. Since the Russian Revolution it's been abundantly clear to all (virtually, except the ultra-ultra-left) Marxists that there were signficant advantages to workers organizing outside of the most advanced capitalist countries and that those workers in the most advanced capitalist countries would not be the first to overthrow capitalist relations in any substantive sense - because they weren't, and everyone could see it, and so pointing it out is of no political value. All the "third worldists" do is defend bourgeois nationalists in colonial or sub-imperialist countries, some of them quite reactionary, and attack or disrupt progressive organizing in advanced capitalist countries. Advanced capitalist countries, by the way, are the only place you'll find it, because no workers in the "third world" see any value in crushing the "first world" working class. If anything "third worldists" are the best example of the decadence and reaction of the first world.
I think Canadian and American "maoists", and "third worldists" in particular, are regularly just guilty petty-bourgeois and bourgeois students (or trolls). I'm not intending this as a slight against Mao or maoism in general, whatever criticisms I might have, but that's the tendency.
That said, I wouldn't rule out state funding for the express purpose of disrupting working class organizing in advanced capitalist countries that would threaten capitalism in those countries. It's happened before.
The point is to explain it, which third worldists have attempted to do with theories of labor aristocracy, unequal exchange, and so on. These are things that need to be addressed and analyzed in any progress is to be made. This tendency isn't limited to marginal post-Maoist sects in the United States and never was, it's much larger and more diverse than you probably realize.
It's weird of the criticisms of third worldists from within the socialist movement tend to mirror the criticisms that liberals and rightists level at the communist movement as a whole almost exactly.
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The "third worldists" don't provide viable explanations though.
No, they're the opposite. The main problems liberals and rightists (ie. the bourgeoisie) have with communists is that they strengthen the working class. The problem communists have with the "third worldists" is that they weaken the working class in the first world, and don't do anything else. The demographic fact that petty-bourgeois students are also overrepresented in parts of communist movement is incidental. Historically the communist movement in imperialist countries has been predominated by workers, because it has been a mass movement, and communism as a mass movement is never going to be brought forward by the bourgeoisie, whatever individuals might be drawn to it for sincere reasons. The bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries, however, have a lot of reason to support "third worldism", because it attacks their main enemies, the first world working class. If struggle by the working class in Vietnam against the American bourgeoisie gets too sharp, the Americans can leave and go somewhere else. If struggle by the American working class becomes to intense, the American bourgeoisie's very existence is threatened.
I haven't really heard any other explanations at all, let alone good ones. I'm also not at all convinced you really know that much about third worldist theory. A good primer as far as the United States goes is J Sakai's Settlers, available for free download here. There are also some good primers on unequal exchange such as this that I can point you to. I'm not aware of anywhere that it's available for free, but you can probably find it on aaaarg or something.
I can't imagine how the LLCO could be said to be 'weakening the working class', because they're essentially a non-entity. The only time they've ever made the news is once when Michelle Malkin got mad at them for counter-protesting the Tea Party and calling them racists. In any case, if the working class in the United States is weakened by something as trifling as weirdos calling them mean names on the internet, then they probably weren't all that strong to begin with. I'm guessing this has much more to do with bruised socialist egos than any sort of appreciable harm to working-class struggles.
That aside, you're talking historically for a moment here. What has actually happened, historically, as far as socialist movements in the first world go? By and large, class struggle in the first world hasn't threatened the bourgeoisie's existence at all, but rather has taken the form of a reformist, social democratic compromise. The third worldist position, most fundamentally, is that this trend has a material basis, and I can't see any reason not to pursue analyses along this line.
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I'll grant you that, thank god, it's not a substantive political force. Yes, all they do is aggravate and distrupt, but it mostly happens on a pretty minor and insignificant level (though I have seen some with similar ideologies do considerable damage to the left in the Quebec student movement's alliance with labour, a fact not insignificant). If, however, the best you can say of an ideology is that its attempts to thwart progressive organizing is that it's ineffective at it, you're not exactly handing it a complement.
Until a few decades ago, they led struggles that acquired the highest living standards for workers at any point in history. The fact that reaction and revisionism has led to retreats is as much evidence that first world workers are incapable of socialist revolution as reaction and revisionism in India and China over a similar period are evidence that Indian and Chinese workers are equally incapable. What have socialist movements accomplished in India? In the Congo? In Brazil? In Somalia? In Cambodia?
Class struggle in the "third world" has regularly taken the form of an analogous compromise with the national bourgeoisie. Again, reformism, revisionism and reaction are political dangers for the working class everywhere in the world. Also, bourgeois engineers of pro-worker reforms have regularly articulated a sincere fear that working class organizing would threaten their class power. Socialist revolution in Germany was basically crushed by war and fascism, as it was in Spain and Greece. You have no historical argument that's intelligible at all for the same reason you have no theoretical argument: you're an anti-marxist who has an idealist, if reactionary, view of history, one more founded out of contempt than science, whatever your pretensions.
Of course right-wing trends in the labour movement have a material basis. Again, people who are actually Marxists are more than capable of clearly articulating this, in ways that are neither reactionary nor nonsensical.
Surely you're joking?
http://allpowertothepositive.blogspo...cheeziest.html
From LLCO/RAIM's own.
I don't see any thwarting going on, and I'm not even sure you imagine what form this would take. What I do see is a massive degree of pissing and moaning from first world socialists every time the issue comes up, contradictory cries of 'reaction!' and "ultra-leftism!', endless accusations that this is all the work of spoiled brat students who don't understand the real workers, (as though Marx scribbled Capital on the back of a barroom napkin in between shifts at the coal mine and Engels was an illiterate peasant), all coupled with a serious ignorance of the issues involved and an critical failure to engage, let alone substantively refute, third worldist arguments.
If you're actually losing ground to the LLCO or something similar, then that's what's to blame, not the third worldists. I don't agree with their stance on first world socialist organizing, but that also doesn't incline me to stick my head in the sand and become a first worldist, any more than the inane rantings of Louis Farrakhan lead me to deny the existence of white privilege.
That's absurdly reductionist. If you think that communist movements in Russia, China, Germany and the United States all failed to achieve permanent state power for the same reasons, you're ignoring most of the actual history so that what's left fits into a convenient narrative. Not that convenient though, considering that it does nothing to explain why communist movements in the first world, at least since WWII, have had even less success.
I haven't really seen this outside of third worldism, labor aristocracy theory and so on, just empty-headed denialism like the kind you have to offer.
Last edited by Thug Lessons; 10th June 2011 at 07:26.
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I don't see anything in there about supporting the bourgeoisie, just a refusal to support pro-union protesters in Wisconsin on the grounds that doing so doesn't solve the problems the author thinks are more important. There's a meaningful difference there. I don't agree with that, but it shouldn't be misrepresented as the RAIM guy cheering capital on in its quest to crush first world labor.
edit: Also, this appears to be a RAIM blog, and the responses the blogger is giving to Nick Brown tend to reject much of what he's saying.
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In all do fairness, this could be said of any other tendency: Trotskyists, Anarchists (of any sort), etc. but I do get what you're saying. I would be willing to wager that this is particularly true with these "Third-Worldists." I mean, I personally don't have the technology, resources and shit necessary (I assume) to make such propaganda and regardless of it being representative of a certain party and it's viewpoints/line, it seems like the work of some college art major.
I don't think I would necessarily rule this out as a possibility either.
I'll use the term "first world" (and related) without quotes because I can't be arsed to do it every time, but I still don't think it's an intelligible way to organize the world.
I don't see any thwarting going on, and I'm not even sure you imagine what form this would take. What I do see is a massive degree of pissing and moaning from first world socialists every time the issue comes up
The "issue comes up" mostly because losers harass us online, at demonstrations, and at meetings. They're being irritating at best and destructive at worst. They don't offer any meaningful suggestions about how to overcome the challenges of socialist organizing in first world countries, particular challenges which do exist for material reasons. They consistently have nothing to offer and mostly to stick around to annoy people. That people would by and large react with unsophisticated annoyance is unsurprising.
contradictory cries of 'reaction!' and "ultra-leftism!'
It's a perfect case though of how ultra-leftism becomes reaction though. There's no contradiction. If your politics lead you to oppose progressive movements and organizations, even if it's "left" politics, then you become a de facto reactionary. That your politics would become explicitly reactionary, explicitly calling for a reduction in living standards for the working class, is unsurprising. There's no contradiction, and you apparently are utterly unfamiliar with the Marxist use of the term "ultra-leftism".
endless accusations that this is all the work of spoiled brat students who don't understand the real workers
It's just an observation. I know many, many first world workers who support socialist organizing by the first world working class, and third world workers who support the same. Of the people who advocate reactionary positions regarding first world workers, exactly one is anything other than a petty bourgeois student, and he has, though I don't want to go any details because the internet isn't anonymous and he's the father of a friend of mine, his own issues that would not exactly clarify his judgment.
(as though Marx scribbled Capital on the back of a barroom napkin in between shifts at the coal mine and Engels was an illiterate peasant)
I never said that a bourgeois or petty bourgeois background was an immutable barrier to the scientific understanding of society, and in fact, haven't denied that the prototypical "petty bourgeois students" have indeed participated, with varying degrees of productiveness, in first world socialist movements.
In fact, I haven't even argued the contrary, that workers would be unable to believe the horseshit that third-worldists come up with. I could though, at least on the strength of the absence of counterexamples.
both coupled with a serious ignorance of the issues involved and an critical failure to engage, let alone substantively refute, third worldist arguments.
We just get tired of it. I've done it before and so have all my friends. You don't have anything valuable to say. I think this basically expresses the tone:
If you're actually losing ground to the LLCO or something similar, then that's what's to blame, not the third worldists. I don't agree with their stance on first world socialist organizing, but that also doesn't incline me to stick my head in the sand and become a first worldist, any more than the inane rantings of Louis Farrakhan lead me to deny the existence of white privilege.
What is a "first worldist"? There used to be North American or European supremacists tolerated on the Marxist left - and they were mostly old news in the 60s.
That's absurdly reductionist. If you think that communist movements in Russia, China, Germany and the United States all failed to achieve permanent state power for the same reasons, you're ignoring most of the actual history
Of course it would be, and those who make such simplistic and reductionist arguments are being absurd. I'm not making any such argument at all. You implied that first world workers universally suffer from revisionism and reformism, while third world workers do not. You implied, reductively, that the lack of a sustained socialist revolution in an advanced capitalist country is the consequence of this tendency to revisionism and reformism. But you provided no explanation for the absence of a sustained socialist revolution outside of China (now a capitalist country), the Soviet Union (now several right wing capitalist republics), and Vietnam (now effectively a capitalist country), an absence which in the case of first world countries - a limited number of test cases, effectively limited to three "units" in North America, Japan and the "Asian tigers, and Western Europe - you argue is somehow illustrative.
I never at all argued or implied that revisionism and reformism don't have complex histories, or the same causes in all cases.
Not that convenient though, considering that it does nothing to explain why communist movements in the first world, at least since WWII, have had even less success.
Not in and of itself, but again, I never denied that there are material reasons which would lead to it being more difficult for workers in the most advanced imperialist centres to overthrow capitalism. In fact, I explicitly stated as much, so arguing othewise requires conscious distortion of what I'm saying.
I haven't really seen this outside of third worldism, labor aristocracy theory and so on, just empty-headed denialism like the kind you have to offer.
"Labor aristocracy theory", as you put it, is problematic, but conflating it with "third worldism" is like saying that elephants and feathers are both large animals.
If you really insist, to put it most basically: The bourgeoisie in the most advanced countries has extensive resources for putting down revolutions. Occasionally this takes the form of making concessions in the form of social-democratic reforms - but this basically only ever happened once in history, over a twenty year period between the early 40s and the early 50s. It significantly takes the form, perhaps most importantly, in an almost incomprehensibly sophisticated network of propaganda and indoctrination that can't be accomplished in the third world. At the end of the day, though, they do it by force, as they did in Germany.
It's also clearly true that first world workers are less likely to be offended by their living conditions than those of third world workers, because the former are clearly better than the latter, and so there is less immediate inducement to resist. This has demonstrable material effects and absolutely every organizer recognizes as much.
But it's also true that first world workers, when they organize, and they do, have stronger material and social means to fight back. First world workers are more literate and have technical skills which the most oppressed workers in the third world do not. First world workers have significant material means to use in the course of political organizing - they can afford to take time off work in some cases, to feed their kids while on strike, to fund political and media campaigns, and so on. They relatively rarely face murder from the state. They have cell phones, e-mail and Facebook, all of which can be exceptionally useful if used responsibly, and which are of limited availability or utility to "the most oppressed". They have a whole lot of resources that make their organizing objectively easier, more powerful, and more likely to be successful. If you actually look at history materialistically, you'll see this.
I'm not going to address everything in that massive, line-by-line response. That style of debate only serves to bury people in extended responses rather than push the discussion forward, and makes the whole thing less accessible to people who aren't directly engaged themselves. I'll try to pick the most relevant point and prune the tangents as best I can.
I've also heard bad things about the organizational style of the LLCO and similar groups, (MIM, RAIM, etc.) And I'd agree that they tend to be absolutely braindead when it comes to offering meaningful advice to contemporary socialists in the first world - partly because what they're saying doesn't really change much in terms of what first world socialists should do on a day to day basis, and partly because they tend to subscribe to a Manichean view of the world that's profoundly unhelpful. None of this, however, really presents a challenge to the core ideas they're advocating, which I've yet to see a good refutation of.
If you're really looking for some relevant, valuable advice from third worldists though, J Sakai offers some insights in his 'Race Burns Class':
http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/books/raceburn.html
That's quite true, but then again open chauvinism isn't really tolerated at all in modern society at large, let alone the left, so these things are left to seep through in other ways. I've yet to meet anyone in a socialist organization who voiced opposition to gender equality, but I've met more than a few that thought the whole thing was a distraction, would dispute the fundamentals and premises of feminist theory to no end, and just tended to have shitty attitudes towards women both within the organization and outside it. Similarly, I haven't met any white supremacists either, but there's more than enough tokenization, claims that race is "just a class issue", and general ignorance of the importance of race (outside of its usefulness in rhetorical grandstanding) to go around. I'd call these attitudes sexist and racist respectively.
First worldism follows a similar vein. Where the misogynists and racists in the socialist movement deny male privilege and white privilege, first worldists want to deny that there's any privilege associated with living in the first world. The article you posted is a great example of that - as though we could use Marx's critique of political economy to sweep these issues under the rug. In fact, you could use these exact same arguments to dismiss feminist and anti-racist arguments about income differentials between their groups and white males as irrelevant, but yet they're still there, and socialists aren't doing anyone any favors by ignoring them, least of all themselves.
There's probably no reason to continue on this line, because from what I'm reading any disagreements we have are likely to be more pedantic than relevant. I'm going to drop it unless you think it's particularly important.
I'm not sure how you'd define third worldism then. Is it essentially the ideology of MIM, the LLCO, etc. to you? I'd look at it as a larger current but this may, in the end, be a more semantic distinction than a practical one.
I'm well aware of the use of violence in maintaining state power, and of the massive capacity for violence that states in modern advanced nations hold. You have to admit, though, that this violence, while sometimes applied, is almost never applied as broadly or as brutally as it was before the Second World War, (when, coincidentally, worker's movements were both larger and more radical). It's not even close to enough to explain the current destitute state of the left.
Now, if you want to turn to propaganda to fill that gap, there's two problems. Firstly you're decidedly turning away from any sort of materialist analysis. I'm not going to deny there's any effect here, since there surely is, but it has to be fundamentally tied to the economics or it's pure idealism. Secondly, there is a zero chance that the left will ever be able to win the propaganda war. They should certainly try to the extent that it's useful, but the way media and information systems generally are structured precludes any sort of mass struggle, and if they're really holding back the floodgates they'll likely do so forever.
This is largely correct. You're mistaken on a few minor points, (for example cell phones are actually quite common the world over these days), but they're just that, minor. There are larger issues here too though, besides the day-to-day operations of socialist organization.
Last edited by Thug Lessons; 10th June 2011 at 10:18.
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Kudos to Thug Lessons for standing her ground. I've been told MTWism is a fraudulent ideology but if it can attract women of her caliber, there must be something to it.
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I'm not going to address everything in that massive, line-by-line response.
You started off by saying that you were offended that we don't actually address what you and yours say. I'd actually prefer not to do that though because I think it's probably a waste of time. I hope it's a waste of time, actually.
None of this, however, really presents a challenge to the core ideas they're advocating, which I've yet to see a good refutation of.
They don't offer any useful ideas. On the rare occasions they actually offer ideas, if people feel like it, they'll point out that they're a combination of blatant falsity, and pseudorevolutionism as a cover for reactionary politics.
If you're really looking for some relevant, valuable advice from third worldists though, J Sakai offers some insights in his 'Race Burns Class'
Yeah, he's full of shit too. But I can't explain why because you don't want me to go "line by line", and he doesn't offer intelligible, uncontradictory theses that can be dealt with in a short space.
That's quite true, but then again open chauvinism isn't really tolerated at all in modern society at large, let alone the left, so these things are left to seep through in other ways. I've yet to meet anyone in a socialist organization who voiced opposition to gender equality, but I've met more than a few that thought the whole thing was a distraction, would dispute the fundamentals and premises of feminist theory to no end, and just tended to have shitty attitudes towards women both within the organization and outside it.
There are some rare misogynists, but there are a lot of "feminists" who are outright fucking reactionaries and they more than deserve political attack. I'll certainly grant that there are cases where Marxists actually act to repress, say, feminism, because they're opposed to gender equality, and when it happens it's reprehensible. But in a lot of cases, it gets called that, but what they're actually doing is defending legitimate political points. Not everything a "feminist" or an "anti-racist" says is right, and if we pretend otherwise we're going to lose, because getting politics right matters.
claims that race is "just a class issue"
Except that I think this is basically the thesis of your Sakai fellow, not that it's clear because he regularly and casually contradicts himself.
First worldism follows a similar vein. Where the misogynists and racists in the socialist movement deny male privilege and white privilege, first worldists want to deny that there's any privilege associated with living in the first world.
I'm increasingly believing that "privilege" is almost never a useful category in analyzing the world politically, but absolutely no one could think that there isn't relative privilege involved with living in the most advanced capitalist countries (or parts of them. There are cities in South Africa where the living standards of a working class black person are substantially higher than that of others.)
I'm not sure how you'd define third worldism then. Is it essentially the ideology of MIM, the LLCO, etc. to you? I'd look at it as a larger current but this may, in the end, be a more semantic distinction than a practical one.
The basic point is that the fundamental axis of struggle is geographic (or sometimes national) rather than class. This is anti-marxist.
I'm well aware of the use of violence in maintaining state power, and of the massive capacity for violence that states in modern advanced nations hold. You have to admit, though, that this violence, while sometimes applied, is almost never applied as broadly or as brutally as it was before the Second World War, (when, coincidentally, worker's movements were both larger and more radical). It's not even close to enough to explain the current destitute state of the left.
I made it quite clear that this is mostly only true historically.
Firstly you're decidedly turning away from any sort of materialist analysis.
I don't think you know what "materialist" means. Hint: it doesn't mean that it doesn't matter what people think.
I'm not going to deny there's any effect here, since there surely is, but it has to be fundamentally tied to the economics or it's pure idealism. Secondly, there is a zero chance that the left will ever be able to win the propaganda war. They should certainly try to the extent that it's useful, but the way media and information systems generally are structured precludes any sort of mass struggle, and if they're really holding back the floodgates they'll likely do so forever.
If you're suggesting that we're not ever going to win the ideological struggle, then you're suggesting we're never going to win the class struggle, a fatalism utterly useless for anyone and one which I'm not at all interested in.
You're going out of your way not to get what I'm saying. You're welcome to address whatever you please, but there's no need to pick apart every sentence someone writes unless your aim is specifically to be pedantic and stifle debate. That method has nothing to do with how a face-to-face debate works, let alone how intellectual discourse is carried out, and is really only useful when you're dealing with someone who is massively uniformed or just an idiot and you have no interest in convincing them but just proving them wrong by brute force. You've apparently already decided that's the situation here, but you might find I'm not so unreasonable as you might think. I'd love to have a discussion of Sakai's writings, or third worldist theory, or whatever, but if you're going to seize on any sign of rhetorical weakness and nitpick it to death then don't bother. That is a waste of time.
This is just a shitty attitude towards the left generally, but let's not even bother with that tangent.
There's usually a much steeper gradient of privilege on average between relatively rich and poor nations than between relatively rich and poor cities within a nation, but overall that's correct. The relevant issues here would be why that privilege exists, what effect it has on the dynamics of class struggle in each situation, and to what extent it can be maintained.
That doesn't exclusively describe third worldists, nor does it describe all third worldists. It's essentially indistinguishable from, say, Mao's ideas on the united front during the Japanese invasion, or even the foreign policy of any communist state working as a (largely) isolated actor. It's not really anti-Marxist unless you're a strict internationalist, which I'm guessing you aren't. It could also describe the support for black nationalism sporadically advocated in the Comintern line and its CPUSA organs fairly well, so really this definition isn't working.
On the other end, it wouldn't really be adequate to describe the theories of Tony Cliff, Michel Pablo, or even Sakai, (who as you've probably noticed is my primary influence, while those others aren't much of an influence at all), all of whom could arguably be described as third worldists. Honestly, a much better definition here would be to described reformism and the weakness of labor movements in the advanced nations generally as being a result of economic forces above all others, though perhaps that would fit in better with an idea of 'labor aristocracy'.
A materialist analysis would certainly preclude any explanation of history where propaganda rather than economics was the driving force, I would think.
What you aren't going to do is out-propagandize the established order by using a system designed by said order to ensure they have a monopoly on the public discourse. That's a quixotic quest to beat capital at its own game, akin to Nikita Khrushchev claiming they Soviet Union was going to out-develop the West, (or, for that matter, a MTWist who claims the third world should colonize the United States in an effort to end imperialism).
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Why can't you just get down with Kasama or fuck even the RCP like a normal person?
