Grevling posted:

Did you watch the video or did you just react to the title?

Grevling posted:

Did you watch the video or did you just react to the title?

V. Illych L. posted:

the maoist critiques of the soviet union were for a large part entirely valid though

Grapplejack posted:

I didn't watch it, I just got a good laugh at the title and thought this thread would enjoy it.

Grevling posted:

Alright, I watched it and it was pretty reasonable. They use clickbaity titles partly ironically and partly to attract the kids who watch politics videos on youtube all day so they'll hopefully become communists.

Pomeroy posted:

Mao's valid critiques are the ones that "Maoists" now have to pretend never existed.

"Khrushchev is cowering, objectively selling out the interests of the colonized world (and China's interests in particular) in the futile hopes of placating the more militarily powerful US empire, while in effect emboldening it!"

[Some time later]

"The USSR is a fascist and imperialist power, far greater and more terrible than the US and all its junior partners, to the extent that open alliance with the US against the USSR is not only justifiable, but obligatory, and if you disagree you're a fascist too!"

Pomeroy posted:

Mao's valid critiques are the ones that "Maoists" now have to pretend never existed.

"Khrushchev is cowering, objectively selling out the interests of the colonized world (and China's interests in particular) in the futile hopes of placating the more militarily powerful US empire, while in effect emboldening it!"

[Some time later]

"The USSR is a fascist and imperialist power, far greater and more terrible than the US and all its junior partners, to the extent that open alliance with the US against the USSR is not only justifiable, but obligatory, and if you disagree you're a fascist too!"

ToxicAcne posted:

I think a large part of the appeal of Anarchism in the west is that it allows you to believe in socialism without confronting anti-communist beliefs that the population holds. In the Chomsky article that I linked earlier, the author mentions that one of the reasons why Maoism was so big amongst 60s radicals was because it allowed them to Marxists without confronting their anti-Soviet indoctrination.

Benagain posted:

are you loving kidding me

you're suggesting that anarchism is an easier sell than communism and that most people don't just conflate the two along with every other leftist ideology.

Dreddout posted:

A while ago some goon posted a comparison map of sales of the conquest of bread vs the communist manifesto

Virtually every nation in the world had the communist manifesto outsell the conquest of bread, the big exceptions being America, the UK and Canada

So it appears that the anti-communist sentiment is more of an anglophone phenomenon than an american one

V. Illych L. posted:

in my country the maoist tendency was legitimately very strong and has active descendants with parliamentary representation right now. i personally know several of ex-maoists and have read some of their texts from the time, from their newspaper the class struggle which firmly espoused the party line most of the time in the seventies.

the term consistently used for the soviets was 'social imperialist', I.e. that their dealings with the post-colonial and non-soviet world was always geared towards the interest of the soviet union's geopolitical position and status, though with the meaningful distinction that the mechanisms involved were not bourgeois accumulation but rather a form of chauvinist, defensive socialism. this critique - basically that they treated the soviet-aligned communists not as agents of communism, but as agents of the geopolitical interest of the soviet union - is imo perfectly valid. the soviets consistently, from stalin onwards, left local communist groups in the lurch when it suited them

again, in my country the maoist descendant party remains the most firmly anti-american and consistently left-wing group in the country, more so than our eurocommunist-descended socialist party

Dreddout posted:

Anarchists also have to deal with a lot less apologia for their movement than communists. you don't have to learn how to vigorously defend mahkno because nobody knows who he is. Unlike Stalin and Mao, men who are generally regarded to be as bad as hitler in american culture


A while ago some goon posted a comparison map of sales of the conquest of bread vs the communist manifesto

Virtually every nation in the world had the communist manifesto outsell the conquest of bread, the big exceptions being America, the UK and Canada

So it appears that the anti-communist sentiment is more of an anglophone phenomenon than an american one

Lady Militant posted:

reading a piketty book in highschool made me feel smart

Ruzihm posted:

yeah if you want a real theory knower, look to Alan Freeman.

uncop posted:

They don't though, and talking about "maoist" critiques is entirely valid because later maoists upheld and expanded them (although there is no general agreement on the expanded stuff). Can't find the quote rn but IIRC Mao also made a general statement that China and others, if they were to follow the capitalist road, would have a fascist form of capitalism.

I think maoists not calling out China as fascist is more of a realpolitik thing: the movements engaged in People's War don't want to needlessly antagonize China when it's right next to them, but they still do intervene when the wrong political line toward China would be actively harmful (such as the question of whether China is imperialist). OTOH US and euro maoists are hollering about social fascism all the time and not sparing China.

I think we should denormalize calling internet dengists and brezhnevites "maoists" just because they claim Mao. It's like putting some fanclub's internal canon on the level of reality. I mean those dudes who obviously first collect a line of heads ("I uphold Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Brezhnev, Ho Chi Minh, Sankara, Nasser, Gaddafi, Saddam, ...") and then make poo poo up to make it believable for themselves that those people would all have been laughing and high fiving each other if they were put into the same room together.

super sweet best pal posted:

I think we should do something to increase awareness of the rising communist sentiment in America. Something to freak out libs and conservatives who aren't terminally online. Shift the Overton window and have it be a discussion point as we get closer to November.

Whatever it is needs to be visible. Maybe we could get an ad company to print up some door hangers with a few brief statements about the benefits of communism and put them on the door of every home in a major suburb. Most of the people will just ignore them but it'll put the idea in their head that communism is trying to make a comeback.

Algund Eenboom posted:

V. Illych L. posted:

in my country the maoist tendency was legitimately very strong and has active descendants with parliamentary representation right now. i personally know several of ex-maoists and have read some of their texts from the time, from their newspaper the class struggle which firmly espoused the party line most of the time in the seventies.

the term consistently used for the soviets was 'social imperialist', I.e. that their dealings with the post-colonial and non-soviet world was always geared towards the interest of the soviet union's geopolitical position and status, though with the meaningful distinction that the mechanisms involved were not bourgeois accumulation but rather a form of chauvinist, defensive socialism. this critique - basically that they treated the soviet-aligned communists not as agents of communism, but as agents of the geopolitical interest of the soviet union - is imo perfectly valid. the soviets consistently, from stalin onwards, left local communist groups in the lurch when it suited them

again, in my country the maoist descendant party remains the most firmly anti-american and consistently left-wing group in the country, more so than our eurocommunist-descended socialist party

Grapplejack posted:

Pomeroy posted:

You can't coherently uphold "The Differences Between Comrade Togliatti and Us" and the later line of a restored capitalism and fascism more dangerously imperialist than the US and its allies. They're contradictory lines. People who claim to uphold both either don't understand one or the other line, or indeed both, or believe it is somehow politically necessary to paper over the differences between them.

Lady Militant posted:

My favorite criticism of 1984's vision of dystopia is that it is incredibly egotistical in the "well clearly the most powerful government the world has ever seen would be personally invested in paying attention to me how could it ever be otherwise? aren't I the center of the universe?"

When in real actual hyper-authoritarian states in history it's the exact opposite where the ruling powers basically ignore the existence of everyone below them; needs/desires/wants included, because investing massive amounts in monitoring every single person would mean less money for rich people + guns to shoot striking workers.

Lady Militant posted:

1984 but it's actually realistic so the monitoring services have all been hollowed out by budget cuts over the years. The ending is similar to the wizard of oz where it's revealed that all the central leading INGSOC party members died decades ago and the bureaucrats still around have kept up going through the motions because they don't know anything else other than the party/government.

Cerebral Bore posted:

its always funny to see people hold up orwell as someone worth listening to because it's trivial to see that he was dead wrong in all his predictions of the future

THS posted:

that’s because he never internalized anti-imperialism and was actively anti communist. and it’s not like people didn’t know better back then.

GunnerJ posted:

Well, it's also pretty clear that it's only Party members getting closely monitored, the general population is largely ignored/kept complacent with booze and sports.