How did a Trotskyist current (Marcyism...

How did a Trotskyist current (Marcyism, or "support literally anything that's arguably anti-imperialist") become *the* defining tendency in Marxism-Leninism, completely overshadowing other strains such as anti-revisionist Marxism-Leninism, MLM and Hoxhaism?

Because most teens imagine Trotsky as this sort of messiah-like figure who could have literally solved every problem the USSR ever faced, were it not for that fat Georgian fuck getting in the way.

i don't think you understand. i'm asking why most people who consider themselves anti-Trotsky get their political ideology of across-the-board anti-imperialism from an essentially trotskyist concept of global class war

Just sounds like you want to attribute anti-war sentiments to one dude so you can dismiss it as a deviation and eccentricity in socialist thought tbh. So eat a dick you fucking loser

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But sorry, carry on, tell us again about how a Trotskyist invented anti-imperialism

What are the odds that OP would be in the "there are no WMD, but Saddam is bad anyway!" camp if he was not two years old in 2003?

yfw im posting this from the position of basically being a marcyite


revolutionary defeatism is separate from anti-imperialism if there's not a realistic chance your country will lose

There's realistic chance your country can't fulfill its objectives if it is forced to retreat under popular pressure, which is where, ideally, a Left that is not cynical about anti-imperialism comes in.

And that doesn't stop you from being wrong

but im saying i wouldnt support invading iraq because i am an anti-imperialist


then what happens

How am I supposed to know, any scenario that involves a Left being relevant and influential is just pure conjecture at this point.

Because American Marxists are woefully primitive and amateurish. It's good that a bunch of Trots have mostly renounced Trotskyism, it's bad that they still have a lot of leftover Trotskyist baggage mainly in their methods of organization. While PSL usually takes a firm and commendable line against imperialism, their members are weak on theory, their reading lists don't even compare with the BPP reading lists, and their praxis largely consists in scattered activism. They have totally random OPSEC that isn't informed by any concrete understanding of modern policing or surveillance. They habitually set up front organizations like ANSWER and now PCOR where they end up boosting opportunists and revisionists. The leadership doesn't respond directly to criticism. There is no training program. They don't actually have a party line. Their paper basically consists of agitation and propaganda material rather than writing with a strong basis in theory.

I'm saying all of this as comradely criticism. I think PSL is admirable compared to most American parties, but the thing we need to keep in mind here is that we don't have to accept "the best we've got." The definition of the vanguard is that it's ahead of everyone else, leading the way. The true revolutionary organization has to GET EVERYTHING RIGHT. PSL would be unrecognizable compared to its current state if it was a true revolutionary organization or party. Therefore there's no use trying to change it for the better. Leaving it in the dust is simpler than fighting to maintain it while destroying all of its structures.

what's even supposed to be the point of anti-imperialist posturing? is the international community supposed to take marxist condemnations and "critical support" seriously? but then isn't imperialism nothing but the logic of capitalism such that if you stamp it out one place it will just re-appear in the vacuum? is it to take a consistent morally principled stance to attract liberals? to help the cadres maintain some kind of consciousness?

Read Lenin.

aka it's larping?

I don’t know, but it’s beautiful.

what party would you join

No, the situation now is worse. Hence why we need Lenin more than ever.

Right now I think we should work on the most effective means of agitation and propaganda that we can muster. We should work on "exposures" of the various facets of the capitalist system, while giving special attention to worker issues because our numbers are so few. However, it's still appropriate for people who aren't able to struggle in the workplace to focus on exposing capitalism in other issues such as schools, policing, etc. Importantly, we must train ourselves to be actually disciplined in security, theory, and propaganda. The revolution won't be on fucking Facebook.

The idea that joining any kind of party is the ultimate shortcut to Marxist-Leninist praxis is a fucking meme. It's 99% guaranteed that none of the parties currently existing in the USA are going to actually be the one that leads us to revolution. The real revolutionary party doesn't exist here yet. The organization of professional revolutionaries has to actually establish itself and gain credibility as the precursor to the formation of the real party. So network with only the most trustworthy Leninists locally and begin the work of agitation and propaganda. Leave the protests and photo ops to the people who like getting arrested.

Because it's the type of Marxism-Leninism that makes the most sense in the age of unquestionable liberalism. That's it.

Socialism is a lot more fun with friends, and Marcyism provides an easy framework that turns every government which is rhetorically anti-American into your ally and means you don't need to ask big questions about class and the market. Not only does Marcyism tolerate capitalism in basically any form, but also identifies the US itself as capitalist hegemony, rather than its most aggressive vanguard. This allows any anti-American sentiment, even nationalistic and vulgar expressions, to be considered Marxism.

But you guys aren't anti-war, you just offer an overly simplistic understanding of empire that in fact justifies any violence against perceived imperialist allies.

Cheering on the pro-Russian fighters in Ukraine is fucking weird even if the Ukrainians are worse. As Marxists, we shouldn't be celebrating any militant organizations that aren't entirely proletarian in character. Groups like Hezbollah and the Syrian Ba'ath party certainly are not. They're just better than the opposition.

while Marcyism is based in Trotskyism I think they're really their own thing, 95% of them would pick Stalin over Trotsky and their Trotskyist heritage seems to be more of a quirk than anything

Marcyism is just Third Worldism squared with Marxism-Leninism I think

Got a feeling it was adopted by American ML groups to win the support of Mao fanatics and anti-imperialist socdems

Read Marx. Marx absolutely supported national struggles.

hey nice to encounter an ML who isn't dumb as shit

If you don't mind, what should an ideal Marxist-Leninist vanguard party look like? Does one exist anywhere? What makes it better than PSL?

Nope, he supported proletarian revolution in Ireland.

(Marx and Engels on Ireland, 1971, pp. 292-3).

Show me where Marx advocated for bourgeois independence for Ireland.

hey nice to encounter an ML who isn't dumb as shit

If you don't mind, what should an ideal Marxist-Leninist vanguard party look like? Does one exist anywhere? What makes it better than PSL?

the global class war theory smacks of trotskyism through and through

To understand this, the question must be asked on a more essential level; what drives anyone to any particular tendency?

Like when we feel like going for a kebab, it is not simply the kebab itself that is desired, but simply being what comes to mind when hunger is felt. Like such a base want as a food is only ever a means to, for every tendency or -ism held there is always also an underlying drive, an underlying ideology. For many leftists this is a gut feeling of America as the Big Bad, perhaps gained through childhood contrarianism, a subconscious resentment of which America becomes the manifestation. I know this was case the for me, when I was 12 I ranted about evil America with the Iraq war as the argument, the soviet union was the anti-America and they looked bad ass, so the projection of my resentment got more shape through that, it grew with my increasing knowledge of the world, was fed by it. A bit later I became a nazi because edge, Hitler rallies looking thrilling and fuck those with niggers at school, the process repeated itself, I looked up nazi stuff on the internet, found stormfront and started parroting arguments from there. A bit later I became a communist again because well i'm hanging with those niggers now and get send out of class with them the white kids are nerds instead of bad ass SS'ers that would wreck this kike school plus that quirky vietnamese girl seems to like me and that makes me feel special. It got more serious from there on, I got to know communism as communists know it instead of the pop-culture image that initially attracted me, I found out as I was an ML, and I hated trotskyists and anarchists because that's what ML's do. I feel this how it went for most ML's in places that have historically don't have a real ML presence , they all seem to be driven by resentment, wherever they go they bring drama, they all envision themselves as theoretical leaders. Unruhe being the prime example; he's a 12 year old's dictator fantasy, like a 12 year old's idea of a smart person is someone who wears a fedora, talks like an early 19th century member of the british gentry and doesn't believe in god. That Rafiq guy from revleft is what happens in the rare case such a person has a Autism Level.

Answer to your question without blogpost: because ML's are pathological cases with what they really hate being everything around and that everything around them being america.

Are you retarded? I say Marx supports national liberation struggles, and you focus in on Ireland?
IE, THEY SUPPORT THE NATIONAL STRUGGLES.

I always suspected that tankies couldn't read.

Holy shit fucking this.

We aren't aiming for an ideal, we are aiming for a practical reality. The thing to keep in mind is that the present sense of safety that communists feel in advocating communism right now is an illusion. Many communists make passing references or attempts at security and secrecy, yet they still conduct major business through Facebook, text messages, cell phone, etc. They still go to public meetings publicly, they go to rallies of ten to twenty agitators while the cops take video, etc. Then when things really heat up, they'll be the first to get arrested or assassinated. The only reason our current primitive amateurishness isn't already getting us all arrested is that we are such a small threat to the bourgeoisie that they are deliberately giving us room to write our own death sentence. Lenin's writing in What Is To Be Done is therefore invaluable to present-day communists, because American history shows us that when the revolutionary crisis of capitalism approaches, the American system is just as capable as the Tsar of brutal repression. We should follow his blueprint for a professional, undercover, loose organization of communist revolutionaries.

The thing to keep in mind is that having a highly-selective, secret group of revolutionaries carrying out the necessary work actually allows the public to participate more in the broader work of revolution (such as sharing revolutionary propaganda, conducting strikes and protests, etc). When the mass organizations don't have to concern themselves any longer with the actions that really get you targeted, they'll have fewer disruptions in their own work.

I'm not sure.

Socialism in One Country, not Permanent Revolution, ok. Praise Stalin.

Socialism in One Country, not Permanent Revolution ok. Praise Stalin.

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Right and the PSL aren't total assad-supporting tankies

Supporting Assad is the only correct Marxist position, fuck off.

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Doesn't matter. The American empire needs to be destroyed for global socialism to occur.

All Empire needs to be destroyed, and it can only be destroyed by socialist revolution, not alternative empire by non-American states.

Socialist revolutions are impossible while American hegemony still exists.

KILL BURGERS

Neither is it possible under not-American-but-still-right-wing-dictatorship hegemony. That's what hegemonies like to do, impose their idea of culture and government overwhelmingly on a large percentage of the world

And replaced by dictatorships that would put all posters in this thread in a 4 by 4 meter cell..

I just love how Amerifats assume that American global hegemony will just be replaced by another equally oppressive regime. That's completely wrong. The goal is multipolarity. That way socialist movements and socialist states can play the capitalists against each other, just like in 1917.

Admittedly it wouldn't necessarily be replaced by one hegemonic power, but if all the great powers in this multipolar system are right-wing/capitalist/whatever then the culture or mentality that this right-wing/capitalist/whatever system is the 'natural' state of affairs will still dominate globally, and with that mentality comes a fear of radical change, specifically left-wing change, the same fear that's kept socialism down for a long time

Explain?

Seems like just a big way to rationalize Soviet realpolitik

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The Syrian government isn't a fucking empire you retard. GTFO of this thread and let the adults speak.

Are you operating under the impression that other imperialist powers will be nicer to socialists?

Because you're delusional if that's the case. America isn't a uniquely evil or oppressive country, any other country in its shoes will do the same and arguably worse, America at least goes for a "soft" imperialism instead of the outright colonialism and conquest of previous empires.


But Russia is. Or, at least, it's trying to build an empire of its own. You think Purim supports Assad out of the goodness of his heart?

Putin

No.

So what? First of all, they'll never manage. But second of all, the conditions of WWI were such that many different countries were competing to establish the kind of hegemony that America has today. The first successful communist revolution happened. Then when the imperialists all started attacking each other in WWII again, Russia was able to gain even more ground. And China was able to have revolution. The more we break up the bourgeoisie, the better our chances.

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But I digress, this is a problem of realpolitik, not ideology. This is something you worry about if you're a small SSR, not a fringe political group with no power.

Whatever happens to Assad, I can guarantee the number of ML groups that declared their "critical support" for him will have fuck all to do with it.

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op, your post literally has no factual basis, yet you wanted this thread to last this long

The United States and Japan were not severely weakened by the war.

What? Ha, no it isn't. There is not theory that suggests that you need to support right-wingers for any reason. This is pure realpolitik, forging shady alliances for some supposed greater end.

Except you're not forging an alliance, you're supporting right-wing dictatorships and getting nothing in return. In fact, its a major hindrance to our politics because you look like a loon in front of most of the working class when you support these dictators out of some vague geopolitical ideal that has nothing to do with them.

"kill people until utopia happens" is basically the biggest brainlet meme on the planet

Both very far away from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Also doesn't refute that the imperialist European countries were exhausted.

What the fuck do you think realpolitik (which anti-imperialist solidarity is NOT) is? IT'S A THEORY.

bump for interest