I’ve been seeing a bad line of thinking in leftist spaces and in myself and I feel the need to call it out.
The western left’s demonization of the class unconscious proletariat is a symptom of idealism that seems sadly acceptable in leftist social media spaces. Class consciousness is not an achievement to be proud of, you didn’t do it, it happened to you.
Labor aristocracy is not a “sin” of the western working class it is a weapon of the bourgeoisie. Unique material conditions are what lead each of us to class consciousness not some sort of moral/intellectual/educational supremacy. The limited class consciousness in the west’s working class is not an inherit flaw in the masses but a failure of the class conscious to conduct effective agitation. (the word “failure” is not a condemnation but recognition that we have been unable to succeed against the overwhelming power of the imperialist bourgeoisie.)
This extends to demonization of the troops. Yes members of the western armed forces actively benefit from imperialism and do horrific things supporting imperialism but they do this out of a response to their material conditions not because they are evil. That is not to say they are absolved of their crimes. It means many of them could be redeemable.
We have all had liberal and imperialist ideas that we now recognize are wrong. We must be willing to accept those who admit the faults of their past who are willing to fight for a better future. Anyone refusing to forgive comrades who admit to a flawed past is being dishonest about their own flaws. They are engaging in ideological moral supremacy. It is not a dialectical materialists position to refuse something changing into its opposite.
Again this is not a call to absolve the complicit but instead a call to remind us that we have all been complicit in some way and we are the proletariat not above them.
Unique material conditions are what lead each of us to class consciousness not some sort of moral/intellectual/educational supremacy.
I used to be a total mistake in high school. First I was Libertarian, then Anarchist during the latter half of high school (as in focusing on the existence of the state as more important than that of class), then a Marxist-Leninist. I do my work despite my fears because I know that it wasn’t my own fault that I was or wasn’t class-conscious.
If there had been no introductions to Anarchism, let alone Marxist-Leninism, I would have been a shameful wreck thruout my entire life. It is up to me to make sure that my neighbors become class-conscious, not said neighbors themselves. Currently I am getting to know my coworkers so I can meet with them sometime (organization), and put up posters from the Soviet Union showcasing the evils of the United States seen today (agitation). The motto I have is this: My purpose helps me along. Whatever the mistakes I have made in my life, it is my purpose that matters.
I grew up doing bible study 2-3 times a week. So I came out of high school loaded up with every bigotry with a name.
There isn’t an easy way to say this that will not sound like an attack, so let’s just rip the band aid off.
This extends to demonization of the troops. Yes members of the western armed forces actively benefit from imperialism and do horrific things supporting imperialism but they do this out of a response to their material conditions not because they are evil. That is not to say they are absolved of their crimes. It means many of them could be redeemable
Nah, fuck PSL. (Btw most of your post was moralism; arguing for or against how liable a person is for their actions is not what allows us to decide revolutionary potential of any given class)
Let’s take an example.
You’re in Germany in the early-mid 20th century and you would like to take down the Nazi government and the way we are going to go about this is we are going to do this to use a Nazi veteran who is sorry about the war crimes he was involved in. The idea is by appealing to Nazi society who we think will be persuaded to ultimately take down Nazi governance by being convinced by the rhetoric of this Nazi soldier who we hope they consider an authorative voice given that (1) he’s a nazi (2) he’s a soldier.
Has the above idealism worked ever in history or you know, did we need to raise a massive advanced bolshevik army to defeat the nazis? Would you understand why the above would be considered idealism and ahistorical?
Now consider this: USAmerican soldiers, by every reasonably considerable metric, are significantly worse than Nazis. Heck, if we are putting up numbers liberals have killed way more than fascists - fascism is inherenrly shortlived and unstable needing non-communists to collaborate with communists to take them down, where as liberals can continue with killing for longer as they create more stablity domestically and with the comprador classes abroad.
The moralism justified in using veterans in the US (an imperial supercore of which global hegemony tilts towards till late, ie the consolidation of all sub imperialisms) can be juxtaposed by the moralism a marxist might then take against the US soldier; the reality of the material conditons of what produces veterans and the material conditions of using veterans in a veteran-honoring-society.
(Moralism and identarianism is part of the human condition, marxism is what hones our lance and point it in the right direction. We may de-emphasise the moralism is in marxism so that the moralism of the marxist can be guided by the science and serve towards the dictatorship of the proleteriat: https://redsails.org/on-identitarianism-a-defense-of-a-strawman/ )
A lot of the most famous marxists betrayed the relative class positions and aspirations but the revolutionary potential is towards the science of wielding marxism - the effort in using veterans as a class would be more useful in actually finding revolutionary classes - in the US this may involve the lumpenproleteriat and migrant populations where the downfall of US imperialism and the dissolution of the US project is in their material interests.
(If you want to convert veterans to marxists so they form a large enough group to take down the fascist military from within, well then that’s an underground movement and you’re not advertising veteran support because the above is essentially anti-veteran. And even then actually successful coups in the direction of socialism (ie not another bourgoisie take over) came from the masses from which some veterans fell in line - it was not tailism)
I sort of get your argument but I also don’t get the historical comparison used because as far as I can tell, it’s more uncharted territory than you make it sound. For example:
Has the above idealism worked ever in history or you know, did we need to raise a massive advanced bolshevik army to defeat the nazis? Would you understand why the above would be considered idealism and ahistorical?
The USSR was not created as a response to Nazism in order to fight Nazis. No doubt, it was the primary military force that fought and ultimately defeated Nazi Germany. But it wasn’t like Nazi Germany was this established thing, known for genocide, and Lenin was trying to figure out how to fight it, so the working class took over a different, adjoining region specifically to fight Nazi Germany.
For parallels, it may be more insightful to go back and look at Rome or something, but I don’t know much about Rome’s history in general. Just that from the standpoint of looking at downfall of empires, that may be more of a clue as to precedent when it comes to internal collapse and changing of power.
The other point I want to make is that if, in this analogy, US soldiers are like Nazi soldiers (or worse), what does that make the rest of us who live in the imperial core? People who, whether we participate in the maintenance of the machine or not, don’t pull out all the stops we can trying to break it? This, I think, is the main “moral supremacy” point that the OP was trying to make with:
Class consciousness is not an achievement to be proud of, you didn’t do it, it happened to you.
We have all had liberal and imperialist ideas that we now recognize are wrong.
Or if it wasn’t intended that way, I will make it myself: Just how far removed from participating in the oppression are we? (I’m sure some here are among the more marginalized, but not all.) Should the revolution only recruit from and aim for the most marginalized? I don’t think that’s a bad idea as material analysis goes, it’s just, that’s a minority of people in the region who has already sacrificed a lot struggling for basic not-being-immediately-murdered-over-nothing (which still isn’t a solid thing).
Why does it need to be one or the other is the other place my mind goes. I’m aware there have been betrayals in the past, which is why it’s so important to keep an eye out for the patsoc types and the opportunists who are looking to improve their own QOL a bit via reforms and then stop there. But like, if there’s somebody who is ready and willing to put themself in the line of fire for marginalized peoples, why get shy about that? Marginalized peoples are not perfect victims. Their material interests are more aligned with the cause, but their knowledge and experience isn’t de facto ready for revolution. So to this question:
what a veteran can do that a non-veteran can’t
Exclusively? Very little. Maybe the only exclusive thing would be being able to potentially provide insight into how the US military is trained to fight if they are a recent veteran. However, assets are assets, provided we are not confusing help with “taking over.” Putting lots of energy into recruiting veterans though? I would agree that’s not a good place to put energy. Not if it’s at the cost of recruiting from the most marginalized.
To clarify:
- idealism here = battle of ideas to win folks over rather than understand the material conditions that form their (and our) ideas. We have to make the case our project is more beneficial than what imperialism provides; for a lot of the imperial core folks it will not be
- ahistorical = not historical materialism
- the rest: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10992751/7897527
Demonization is moral absolutism. It is to brand someone with a supernatural evil status to justify treating them as “the other.” It is dehumanization.
There is nothing magical about gaining class consciousness that makes you fundamentally better than the people who have not. Having better morality does not make you a superior type of human. If you approach the proletariat with the intention of “saving” them like a missionary would you are not helping the cause. It is just another form of the “white savior” complex.
I want every imperialist soldier to cease to be. If I could snap and they would all die I wouldn’t hesitate. I don’t want them to die because they are “evil” or because they need to be punished for their crimes. I want them to cease being because it would further the cause of communism.
Punishment, Evil, Demonization, Othering these are all reactionary, idealist nonsense.
Moralism comes from material conditions.
Arguing for anti-moralism is not the same as an argument whether or not to support these western veterans from a marxist perspective.
How does one understand the revolutionary potential of a given class? By doing class analysis; understanding the relation to property. The primary global contradiction is imperialism and the US is the imperial core. Imperialism is class relationship of protecting and gaining private property against Global South proleteriat.
Let’s consider it from a different perspective. Let’s imagine there was no military industrial complex in the US as we know it now ie all state owned. Would that army’s relationship as a whole to imperialism change? Ie what is the purpose of the army? It is there to help subsidise the lives of the USAmerican proleteriat + bourgoisie + petite-bourgoisie through imperialist extraction; it is this relationship that is centre of whether veterans have revolutionary potential or not, it is to consider what is their role is in these material conditions, how they benefit from it and any moralism has a whole comes secondary to this.
In this context for the imperial core bourgoisie proleteriat you have to consider how and whether you are going to make the case that your project in the short term will offer them better material condtions than one provided by imperialism (challenging to put it mildly).
That is how you step away from idealism and towards dialectical materialism and a deeper class analysis. The PSL have not done so because their material conditions as bourgoisie proleteriat has led them to the ideas they have now.
Ironically your anti-moralism in this context is moralism (crude analogy: “colour blindness” in a response to racism), which is partly why I am not saying your argument is bad because of moralism; rather I am leaning into it but suggesting that moralism should be guided by the science instead.
You’ve missed the point. The post is not for or against judging peoples morality. It is about understanding that morality is learned. It is a product of material conditions. So having superior morality does not make an Ubermench. Just like how a person who has good education or health isn’t superior to someone who is uneducated or has health issues.
Labor aristocrats aren’t inferior to colonized peoples just because they get crumbs from imperialism. People are people. We all have blind spots and shortcomings but if we decide that some of faults are so bad we can deny there is a human underneath that is idealism not materialism. I’m not saying we should overlook faulty morality but we need to analyze it through a materialist lens.
Historically most petite bougies side with capital in revolutions despite the fact that they have more to gain under socialism. In the age of mega-stores, corporate monopolies and farming cartels there is no reason that we can’t change that by winning the propaganda battle … but leftists love to demonize the petite bougies. They’ve written them off because owning a small business is a mortal sin and having employees is unforgivable. It is an idealistic stance that is detrimental.
Dialectical materialism requires reappraisals as conditions are constantly changing. Demonization and supremacist thinking is a calcification of thought.
You’ve missed the point. The post is not for or against judging peoples morality. It is about understanding that morality is learned. It is a product of material conditions. So having superior morality does not make an Ubermench. Just like how a person who has good education or health isn’t superior to someone who is uneducated or has health issues.
Labor aristocrats aren’t inferior to colonized peoples just because they get crumbs from imperialism. People are people. We all have blind spots and shortcomings but if we decide that some of faults are so bad we can deny there is a human underneath that is idealism not materialism. I’m not saying we should overlook faulty morality but we need to analyze it through a materialist lens.
What in all of that allows to determine revolutionary potential? The supposed subjective inferiority/superiority inferred is besides the point; I am saying all that is secondary to material conditions - our subjective value judgement may be consequence of our relationships with all this but it is not the primary reason to determine anybody revolutionary potential from a marxist perspective.
Put it bluntly, what is the material analysis for the revolutionary potential for US Veterans? What relation to property have you concluded to make the case?
What in all of that allows to determine revolutionary potential?
That is not what the post is about. I don’t know how else to say this.
The post is about the tendency for some leftists to think their shit doesn’t stink because they have found Marx and Lenin. The belief that because they lucked out to be in the right places at the right times for communist agitation to have taken hold in their minds that they are the chosen ones. Supposed Communists who say “liberal” like a Proud Boy says “deg_n_rate” or say “troops” the way the kkk say “n___ers.”
If you don’t make the case then you don’t have a case and everything you said will then be apolgism for US Veteran support without a scientific basis.
Getting indignated on the completely human response to these war criminals without making the materialist case we should supercede it is just moralism by another name. There is no neutrality about good or evil, or lack of morals or not; we determine all these things by praxis - we are not above it all.
You’re asking for a supposed scientific neutrality to analysis where none such exists. And you can’t even give the case why all this supposed effort is even worth it.
This stuff is obvious even without marxism. It is only confounding because of the class position as a westerner.
You keep hearing things I’m not saying. More words are not going to help. I give up.
Holy fuck the Nietzschean leftists here are extremely stupid. Everyone “moralizes” and Christianity didn’t invent morals or ethics you fucking goofs. Nobody claims that US soldiers are inherently evil. You adding that word is dishonest. We are trying to fight a war, a class war, and we cannot do so without getting angry at those who defend the status quo. Are you seriously trying to agitate people without arousing their passions? Ah! Good luck then. This revolution of yours would be the first passionless revolution, based on Pure Logic and Objective Facts. You guys aren’t going beyond good and evil. You’re just rationalizing evil.
Christianity didn’t invent morals or ethics
The issue isn’t having morals or ethics? Every society has those in one form or another. Everyone has biases and it’s unavoidable.
The issue is the western “left” has this thing for purity and self-image over tactics and strategy, when it comes to efforts to overcome its awful tendencies. This leads people to doing a thing where they posture to look the most “clean” of the imperial blood spilled with the most pure of positions (ex: ultra-left positions), rather than put their energies into stopping it in its tracks even if it makes them unpopular. It’s not an “everybody in the west” thing, of course. Just applies to some people some of the time.
We are trying to fight a war, a class war, and we cannot do so without getting angry at those who defend the status quo.
Anger at injustice arises from a great love for humanity, for the people. Don’t lose sight of where it comes from. Anger is a tool. It is not the heart of what motivates liberation. It has its time and place, of course, but it is kind of like fire. When wild, it is like a riot. When marshaled, then it can help fuel revolution. So yes, be angry. Just don’t let it burn you out. This is a marathon fight.
I largely agree with you. But putting the word “inherently” where it doesn’t belong is what I consider odd about the post. It’s strawman to begin with. Nobody on lemmygrad argues that soldiers are immutably evil, but rather that it’s not worth much interacting positively with them. And yes, it does seems as if OP rejects morality in its entirety.
He also doesn’t even understand dialectical materialism as evidenced here: “It is not a dialectical materialists position to refuse something changing into its opposite.”
Things don’t change into their opposites. He rejects the negation of the negation. The things changed are both new and improved. While the new develops out of the old, it’s absurd to say something changes into its opposite.
But yeah I agree with you. Well, I think it was you who argued here that it’s mostly a question of rhetoric and practicality. I fail to see why we should give a fuck about US soldiers when it’s obviously better for communists to focus radicalizing other groups of people. And anyway, there was a veteran who self-immolated as a protest against the Palestinian genocide and iirc users on lemmygrad and hexbear were saying that Aaron would have been more useful for the communist cause if he had joined an org instead of doing that kind of defeatist/hopeless protesting, which makes OP’s post very strange to me.
Haha and pretty much agree with the sentiment!
Nietzschean leftists here are extremely stupid. Everyone “moralizes” and Christianity didn’t invent morals or ethics you fucking goofs.
I was trying to be kinder and deliberately left out Nietzsche as I figured it would be a trigger word here.
Seeing some of the comments made here, I want to add a point about strategy vs. sympathy. Considered doing it as its own thread, but eh.
I’ll try to show what I mean with an example. In another comment in this thread, there’s a story I brought up about the “last emperor of China” and how the CPC reeducated him: https://bsky.app/profile/poppyhaze.bsky.social/post/3lea2lmvmg22j
Let me highlight some things from that story. This is a bluesky thread’s description of it, so I don’t know if the representation is exactly accurate, but it’s for example sake anyway:
Puyi was surprised when the Communists, despite putting him in a reeducation camp, treated him quite well. However, the former emperor couldn’t even brush his own teeth at first, and the other inmates ruthlessly mocked the pathetic creature
So what’s being implied here? He was treated well, presumably in the sense of getting needs met rather than, like, being tortured or neglected or something. However, the other inmates were not nice about his inability to do basic things.
They brought him to the former headquarters of Unit 731 in Pinfang, the Japanese biological and chemical warfare directorate. There he was shown how they experimented on Chinese civilians and then developed diseases and toxins to drop on them.
Then they brought one of his former concubines, who had escaped and since remarried. She denounced him as a rapist who assaulted her to satisfy his own cruel urges and talked about how she was glad to finally have a real family who loves her.
They made him confront what he had done in detail. In his case, I guess he had a conscience, so he was able to be moved by this. But notably, again, not being nice about it. Not sugarcoating, not downplaying or sympathizing on what he did.
Puyi, who had previously deflected all blame for everything, finally came to realize the gravity of what he had done as “Emperor”. In his despair, he became suicidal, but Jin Yuan comforted him, telling him he should write his memoirs/confession. Puyi gradually came to accept communism.
When he showed remorse, he received some comforting and redirection toward rehabilitation.
After 10 years, Puyi accepted the blame for what he had done, and revealed some hidden Imperial jewelry to be returned to the Chinese government. Pleased with his remolding, Mao Zedong provided a general amnesty for all reformed prisoners, and returned a sentimental item, his gold watch.
When he accepted responsibility for his actions and worked to make amends, he received a gesture of goodwill in return.
At no point in this story is there an implication of the CPC bending over backwards to be “nice” to a former emperor. In fact, part of the point was (as the story goes) proving the capability of the CPC/communism:
When the People’s Republic won the Chinese Civil War, the Chinese communists negotiated Puyi’s expatriation back to China. There was some expectation he’d be tried and shot, but Mao and Zhou Enlai had a better idea. They wanted to reform him to prove communism won fair and square.
But they still did it. And it worked. The strategy of it was successful. Consider another example. Iran could make official statements saying that the entirety of the US is shit, that its people are all trash, and should all go to hell. As could many other targets of imperialism. And many here would probably agree they are fully justified in saying such things.
However, strategically, it’s more helpful to their own defense and sovereignty if the regular people of empire don’t buy the lies about them and instead see them as regular, decent people who are trying to defend themselves. If it didn’t matter at all, the empire would not try so hard to create narratives justifying its wars.
This is not the same as Iran sympathizing with the regular living in the imperial core. It’s definitely not the same as Iran sympathizing with members of the US military who are attacking them.
The subject of “enforcers of the empire” can be a very loaded one for very understandable reasons. Just please try to distinguish between strategic talk and sympathy. Between tactics on being persuasive and validating poor behavior. Between delving into the science of how things got to be the way they are and wanting to excuse. We have to be able to keep the two distinct if we are to navigate the contradictions.
Thanks for sharing, comrade, that was great. I had heard the case mentioned very, very briefly; now I know.
I’ll take the liberty to repeat the final comment in that BlueSky thread: “common Mao win” 😆 🚩
This extends to demonization of the troops
This is where you lost me. I only ever seen this get brought up when it comes to defending the “troops”. Funny how it’s always like this. If someone complained about Communists “demonising cops/ICE” they’d rightly get made fun of as a lib who is indifferent to the nature of these positions. But it’s specifically a sticking point for you that Communists aren’t saying “thank for your service” to a glorified contract killer.
Also no, American troops aren’t responding to their material conditions. The vast majority come from fairly well-off backgrounds and enlist with the view that it’s a chance to have an “adventure” or to “serve their country” (a country founded on slavery and colonialism). If I had to guess, the truth that you’re indifferent to what the soldiers did abroad because it didn’t happen to you is a fact that is deeply uncomfortable to you.
Adding to that, the internet is an international forum, many of us are in/from the global south, it’s not that we’re too idealistic, it’s that we lost people, or that we know people who lost people, and we don’t care about the feelings of soldiers and their relatives more than we care about their victims.
Thank you for stressing the double standards for cops and ICE agents.
^This.
Not an American and I feel like the past few weeks have been an absurd fever dream with the constant imperial troop apologia going on around here.
Yes everyone can be theoretically reformed given enough time and resources. Even the einsatzkommandos who were burning soviet villages to the ground in 1942 were probably reformable but focusing on that while they were in the middle of enacting a genocide would be obviously extremely dehumanizing towards their victims. Puyi was reformed after he was put on trial for war crimes and was no longer a threat to anyone else. We can focus on reforming imperial troops after they have been disarmed and routed and are not an active threat to the majority of the world. Western leftists need to take a break and ask themselves why out of all possible battles they are picking this particular one at this time and consider how tone deaf it feels to everyone else.
Yes, people sign up due to their material conditions not out of some moral inadequacy. The material conditions in this case are the superprofits the imperial core sucks out of the rest of the world and the fact that they have enjoyed several decades of unrivaled military hegemony. Yes some imperial troops do get got but for most of them war has been a fun human safari where they get to call overwhelming firepower on poor brown people. And yes, troops are still net beneficiaries of imperial explioitation, I can’t believe we are actually debating this. The imperial war machine being defeated and driven out of its neocolonies and made unable to outsource the worst of the suffering required to keep capitalism running to the global south will change those material conditions so your support is better directed towards the axis of resistance.
I am begging americans to stop, take a deep breath, then make a serious effort at considering the perspective and struggles of the global south that is actively being bombed, starved and terrorized. Ask yourselves if writing paragraphs upon paragraphs about reforming the people actively engaged in dropping bombs is really the best you can do right now as communists who believe in international solidarity.
FWIW, the OP emphasized it as directed at the western left (not at the whole world):
The western left’s demonization of the class unconscious proletariat is a symptom of idealism that seems sadly acceptable in leftist social media spaces.
Personally, I just try to keep my mouth shut when it comes to peoples who are not in the imperial core. Their conditions are different and there’s a decent chance I’ll slip into some kind of patronizing tone if I do because of western superiority socializing.
Those of us in the west have much to learn from liberation efforts elsewhere.
I’m not defending the troops. I am saying that troops are humans and just as capable of changing into class conscious beings as any other human. If you think there are people who are immune to the effects of their material conditions you don’t understand Marxism.
Okay, then lets extend this line of thinking to cops. After all, law enforcement are humans capable of change too and if you really believe what you’re saying, you should have no problem being friends with the local PD. ICE, welcome to the ResistanceTM!
The truth is that you brought up troops specifically for a reason. I’ve seen way more “demonisation” of local law enforcement than I have of the military, even among supposed “leftists”, but you are specifically offended about troops. Why? Because your local cops police you while the troops police the vassals and colonies on your behalf. The way you feel about being harassed by cops, is a mere fraction of what the people of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan have had to endure. While the armed forces are human, their victims are also humans.
I agree completely with Commiejones in this regard, and for this I am going to provide a material example. Even at the height of the Brazilian dictatorship, when we had working class people being kidnapped and tortured left and right, militants of the communist party and armed resistance emphasized doing political work in the polices or armed forces. Of course this was done with a certain amount of risk.
Even today when Brazil has one of the most brutal police forces in the world, even more brutal than US, this effort still holds. With communist propaganda gaining traction today in Brazil due to the efforts of some heroic communist agitators, we know today there are some communist sympathizers inside the armed forces and police.
The same happened in Russia, because the workers drafted to kill other workers in world war I were also fighting imperialist wars. The soldiers and sailors who later aligned with the Bolsheviks were instrumental for the success of the Russian Revolution.
You should not expect that the whole corporation will become adhere to our cause. But it’s a necessity to bring people to our side. And we will never be able to dispute the conscience of the people if we always put our morals in a pedestal and everyone else’s in the mud. This is not a proper materialist analysis.
Personally, I don’t believe any of these examples are comparable to Israel and America. I don’t doubt that in many parts of the world, including in western countries like Brazil, there are members of the armed forces who are sympathetic to communism. However, not all military orgs are identical or a regular instrument of imperialism. Being a Russian conscript in WWI is obviously not the same as being an American drone pilot who enlisted of their own volition.
My friend, understand this. The few people who have sympathy for communism today, didn’t have any 5 years ago. Many of those people were liberal or reactionary scumbags. They crossed the line after efforts of agitation, propaganda and action. Any serious communist party needs to have a programme and tactics to deal with the military or police, as well as a strategy regarding war before and after the revolution. War, by the way, is just a continuation of politics by other means.
Of course, it’s just going to take a lot more to foment that sentiment in a volunteer soldier from the first world than a conscript from the global south. It’s very possible, and there are at least a handful who did become class conscious and anti-imperialist. If the end result is someone who aids the cause of global Communism then that’s good, it’s just going to take a lot of time and work to reach someone to get them to that point. Given the current state of the western left, I’m not hopeful about the prospects of that happening anytime soon.
Obviously, if an Israeli ended up defecting and chose to aid the Palestinian national liberation struggle, that’d be a good thing and don’t think any of us would complain. The reality though is that is rarely likely to happen and I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Okay, then lets extend this line of thinking to cops. After all, law enforcement are humans capable of change too and if you really believe what you’re saying, you should have no problem being friends with the local PD. ICE, welcome to the ResistanceTM!
The truth is that you brought up troops specifically for a reason. I’ve seen way more “demonisation” of local law enforcement than I have of the military, even among supposed “leftists”, but you are specifically offended about troops. Why? Because your local cops police you while the troops police the vassals and colonies on your behalf. The way you feel about being harassed by cops, is a mere fraction of what the people of Iran, Iraq, Libya, Korea, Vietnam, and Afghanistan have had to endure. While the armed forces are human, their victims are also humans.
I mean, now you are just making up some weird fanfic about OP and criticising someone that doesn’t actually exist. I can come up with an equally if not more likely scenario too: This post is a response to those other leftists dehumanising soldiers so now the question is why are these leftists disproportionately talking about troops? Maybe you can make up another story about that too.
Just bad faith argumentation to be honest.
OP might be a bit tone deaf here considering the current invasion and genocide piling up on our feeds, but ultimately he is right. Fact is that, if we really believe in the philosophy of dialectical materialism and the science of historical materialism then we must assume that everyone is capable of being reformed. The question is merely how many resources it would cost and how many resources we have and what we gain out of it.
Also, you don’t seem to understand materialism fully yet (me neither, not gonna lie), but a soldier enthusiastically killing a baby is still affected by material conditions.
Material conditions are not just about having no wealth and feeling sad while being beaten down in a dark mental place, but then having a fake “glimmer of hope” in enlisting.
The conditions shaped that person and shaped their enthusiasm for killing babies as well. Of course this can’t ever absolve them since they still needed to make that decision.
Now, John Baby Killer should likely not be the first person we wish to convert, but that is merely because of our own material conditions making that decision feel extremely bad to us, and, more importantly, because of the aforementioned resources that it would take are just not worth it.
No one is asking you to be nice and kind or give a salute to soldiers while they are killing people, but we will need to reform some of them if we want to (partially) take over the military for example. Dehumanisation and, with that, acceptance that being a soldier immediately makes you invalid as a human and comrade will make that task impossible.
It’s not fanfiction, I am simply saying that we should judge that other group by the same standards that OP wishes to apply to troops in order to show how pointless and counterintuitive it is to do so for either troops or cops.
the question is why are these leftists disproportionately talking about troops?
Because no one else is willing to talk about the harm these people do in nearly the same volume as the mainstream does about domestic problems like police brutality or ICE. The real victims in all this are forgotten about and everyone is expected to shed tears over guy having PTSD for killing people in the name of imperialism.
Personally, I think it’s incredibly inconsistent to say “ACAB” while not applying the same standards to troops, we too can make similar appeals to “material conditions” to justify or excuse the things cops do. In theory, everyone is a potential “comrade” but in practice there are also certain groups who will fight and die for capital. Troopers did so once, and likely will a million times before they have a sincere change of heart. I’m tired of having to explain this to people who would rather dive into stale Liberal talking points instead of just accepting pretty obvious objective truths.
It’d be like if I said “Next time there’s a big blowup about ICE or police brutality, I will concern troll about “alienating potential comrades” by being too critical about ICE.” With Communists like these, there is just no way I would ever want this movement to succeed. Lol. Seriously though, the rest of the world shows solidarity with the ineffectual American left, while that same left refuses to reciprocate and goes to bat for the troops that are currently doing something a million times worse than anything the cops have ever done domestically. Amazing how rhetoric like this doesn’t fall under the “No bigotry, anti-communism, pro-imperialism” rule.
I think you’re doing your perspective a disservice by railing against what is effectively a strawman in this case, at least per my reading. In general, it’s entirely valid to highlight discrepancies between opinions about troops and opinions about cops, but ascribing that discrepancy to OP for this thread seems disingenuous. One can make the point you want to make without misrepresenting what OP actually said and is saying.
I haven’t seen anyone dispute ACAB, nor by extension all troops. The question seems to be whether all bastards are beyond redemption.
I don’t believe all bastards are beyond redemption. No one is going to be anywhere close to perfect 100% of the time and will have done or said something reactionary in the past. I simply don’t see the point in giving the benefit of the doubt when it comes to something like this, neither to vets or people who are trying to finger wag us for being disinterested in playing along with the absurd notion that we should ignore their victims. I could get the demonisation point if it was about something like someone having worked in HR or whatever in the past, but we’re talking about guys who unjustly killed people.
You saw the word “troops” and lost the entire plot. The post is not about reaching out and making friends with reactionaries or trying to make cops or troops into comrades. The post is about Moral Supremacy. I mentioned troops because the topic is a lightning rod for moral supremacists. (and it worked!)
Demonizing is the act of labeling a person or thing as supernatural evil. Evil is not a materialist concept. Demonization is inherently reactionary. A demonized thing is irredeemable and inhuman. This is something that can only be done if you have an idealist or spiritualist mindset.
Demonizing comrades because of their past as enforcers of capitalism is not the behavior of a comrade. A comrade who was a goon for capitalism (a cop or a soldier same thing) is still a comrade. Their actions before gaining class consciousness do not define a comrade. What we do to oppose capitalism and imperialism is what defines us as comrades.
Does that mean I expect troops or cops to become comrades? no. The people with the most reactionary thinking are inherently attracted to join the police and military. If it was up to me all they would all get a one way ticket on Tito’s Coal Mine Tour. Should we focus our agitation on them? fuck no. You get better results agitating laborers.
But if one should choose to change sides? They shouldn’t have to hide who they used to be because of an idealist mindset that refuses to believe that people can change. They may have useful information and skills that you can only get by being in their position and we will not get that out of them if they are hiding.
Should we trust them? no but we shouldn’t trust anyone. Every new comrade is a potential wrecker or fed. Every new comrade has brain worms that need to be killed and extracted. We should be pushing and testing our comrades all the time to be sure nobody is harboring bigotry, liberalism, idealism, or supremacy.
And that includes Moral Supremacy like “the ex-soldier who teaches commies to shoot guns build tunnels and avoid being seen by drones did bad things. so even though all I do is read theory and post on the internet, I’m a better communist.”
I mentioned troops because the topic is a lightning rod for moral supremacists. (and it worked!)
Sounds more like you got no real argument and are now trying to pretend it was some clever plan to get the “woke moralists” to reveal themselves or whatever.
the ex-soldier who teaches commies to shoot guns build tunnels and avoid being seen by drones did bad things. so even though all I do is read theory and post on the internet, I’m a better communist.
Actually, it’s really strange to make up this guy and pretend everyone else is wrong for reading what you wrote lucidly. Most of these guys aren’t going to do that, they’re going to end up some Graham Platner type who only supports the “good wars” while wanting a bigger slice of the pie. Really bizarre choice of hill to die on.
Oh fuck! sorry. I must have mistaken you for someone else. HEY EVERYBODY! HES HERE. The one true leftist! The holy reincarnation of Marx who has never done anything to assist capitalism. He will lead us to communism by telling us who is evil and beyond redemption and who is good and worthy of our efforts.
Oh fuck! sorry. I must have mistaken you for someone else. HEY EVERYBODY! HES HERE. The one true leftist! The holy reincarnation of Marx who has never done anything to assist capitalism. He will lead us to communism by telling us who is evil and beyond redemption and who is good and worthy of our efforts.
All of this applies to you.
Exactly this. I don’t remember seeing threads about reforming ICE agents when they were executing American citizens in America. Nobody was concern trolling about moralism and demonization when American citizens were rightfully enraged at being murdered in the street by voluntary paramilitary death squads. Why is it that when American troops are engaged in an active mass murder campaign across West Asia the attitude suddenly changes? Do Americans realize how dehumanizing and alienating this is for everyone else?
This kind of topic has definitely come up before the US and israel started attacking Iran. It’s a real thing that people have to contend with who live in the imperial core, how they deal with the millions of enforcers of empire as a strategic and logistical problem to confront, so it’s going to keep coming up.
I will remind like I reminded someone else that the OP was specifically addressing the western left. It’s not a scolding of peoples who are trying to survive the empire’s attacks. The western “left” has chronic problems with a fetish for defeat, with moralizing over practicality, with repeating colonial patterns of its own socializing in how it talks about how to deal with problems, and more.
For example, you mention dehumanization. That’s one of the things people in the west need so badly to unlearn in the first place; it is an attribute of colonialism here, not anger directed at someone who is killing you. When somebody in an imperialized/colonized country looks at the west and says “fuck em” or whatever, that’s fundamentally not the same characteristics as somebody who grew up in an imperial culture that promotes selective dehumanization of life looking at itself and saying “fuck em”. But westerners will talk as if they’re living the same life by association and sympathy as the empire’s victims.
Does that make any sense or am I seeming off in la la land? Solidarity is born from actions, not words alone. When a western “left” group goes to some ties-building event at another country, or brings them aid, that’s at least something in action as solidarity. When a westerner on the internet goes “yeah I hate them too” about the west, it’s vacuous. It’s gonna be pretty easy for a westerner to say hateful and murderous things compared to those who were raised in a more loving, communal culture. We get socialized, via the shoddy justifications for imperial aggression, that as long as a group is labeled the enemy, it’s all on the table. That’s something westerners have got to unlearn and it’s frustrating that trying to get that across gets interpreted as wanting to coddle war criminals.
Okay, so let’s talk about practicality, class consciousness, and dealing with the enfocers of empire as a citizen of the imperial core.
The reason why class consciousness is low in the US is because the material conditions are stacked against you successfully radicalizing large numbers of people. You, OP and others vaguely point at these conditions but I feel that you fail to actually grapple with them.
I believe a serious analysis would center the fact that American imperialism is the primary contradiction in the world, that citizens in the imperial core are net beneficiaries of imperialism and they have an interest in keeping the exploitation going. This obviously includes troops. American citizens sign up with the armed forces because being a stormtrooper for the empire is currently a lucrative deal overall. As long as the deal stays lucrative they will keep signing up and your efforts at centering their humanity and potential to become reformed and principled revolutionaries are unserious at best and a tone deaf insult towards the global south at worst. Troops aren’t tainted by evil they are bribed with superprofits and you will have an extremely hard time presenting them with a persuasive argument for world commiunism for as long as these superprofits exist.
Obviously as Marxists we believe that the only constant is change and that the material conditions that make citizens of the imperial core much more likely to fall in line and do their part in subjgating the rest of the planet are not eternal. However, the driving force behind these changes is not going to be the western left refining its strategy and sharpening its arguments, it will be the neocolonies violently routing the US war machine, one by one, until the superprofits dry up and the privileged labor aristocracy can no longer be maintained.
Once the chain of imperialism starts breaking from its weakest links the conditions will become more favorable for agitating in the core. However, the US government is not incompetent. It has waged class war against communists for more than a century and will most probably not sit by as contradictions sharpen and simply let you have a revolution. History has plenty of examples to learn from. They will come for the communists before conditions change too much in your favor. They will outlaw your parties and imprison or execute your leaders. You need to seriously consider the fact that the overwhelming majority of enforcers will turn the colonial policing tactics they are currently sharpening on the global south inwards and violently purge you instead of joining the revolution to “teach commies to shoot guns build tunnels and avoid being seen by drones” and develop your strategy accordingly.
Saying that troops are human and can be reformed is a useless platitude that prevents you from forming a useful strategy informed by a correct analysis of class struggle and contradictions. You need to engage with material reality and correctly identify which groups have revolutionary potential and which are likely to be your enemies. I think focusing your efforts on the internal colonies and marginalized people in your country is superior to wasting your time on troops, and this is due to the practical reasons detailed above, not a misplaced sense of moralism or belief in some supernatural evil. I also think that if you are a serious communist, your main concern regarding troops should be protecting yourself from them not protecting them from being unfairly demonized and your preoccupation with the latter makes you seem off in la la land.
As a non westerner whose main concern regarding American troops is getting them out of my country and not being bombed by them if we step out of line, I actually prefer hearing infinite death upon amerikkkan stormtroopers rather than yanksplaining how they didn’t realize they were going to kill children when they signed up. From my perspective, a westerner saying fuck’em is not dehumanizing the troops but recognizing the humanity of their victims and engaging in the most basic display of revolutionary defeatism available. I would obviously prefer solidarity in deeds but I understand that the material conditions inside the core do not favor the left and I don’t demand that you put yourself in danger on a futile quest to materially sabotage your military.
Considering this, I think you should focus on unlearning chauvinism, american exceptionalism and western-centric thought. Much like Nazi Germany was not defeated by German communists who were taught military tactics by disillusioned SS deserters, the war against US imperialism will not be decided by American communists convincing jarheads to defect. I am sorry if this sounds harsh and I would like to be proven wrong because that would make our shared struggle easier but you and the other Americans in this thread are not making a convincing argument.
But it’s specifically a sticking point for you that Communists aren’t saying “thank for your service” to a glorified contract killer.
Huh? At what point does OP say we need to thank and glorify them?
Here are some important snippets from the post:
That is not to say they are absolved of their crimes. It means many of them could be redeemable.
Again this is not a call to absolve the complicit but instead a call to remind us that we have all been complicit in some way and we are the proletariat not above them.
We must be willing to accept those who admit the faults of their past who are willing to fight for a better future. Anyone refusing to forgive comrades who admit to a flawed past is being dishonest about their own flaws.
I can imagine it can come off a bit tone deaf to be focused on a thing like that while we’re in the midst of another aggressive US military operation, but then… when are we not? The western empire doesn’t really take a break in its aggression, it’s just not always super overt about it. When is it supposed to be brought up that those of us in the west have to contend with the realities of living in the same country as millions of troops and the like?
If someone complained about Communists “demonising cops/ICE” they’d rightly get made fun of as a lib who is indifferent to the nature of these positions.
To make another type of comparison: could you imagine if the USSR during the Cold War has a chance to gain something from a would-be defector (as is sometimes the case during those kind of conflicts) and they are like, “Nah, they are part of the US apparatus which is evil, so just ignore it.” That would be strategically backwards. Typically, you still need to keep a person like that at arm’s length and take care that they aren’t faking interest in helping your cause or trying to sabotage from within (which is a documented strategy in those situations), but someone who was working for the enemy who is now using their knowledge and skillset on your behalf is a double loss for the enemy. Rejecting it outright has the potential to not only lose the opportunity to gain help but to drive them back into continuing to work for the enemy.
Furthermore, criticism of these institutions is just that - it’s about the institutions primarily. That’s why someone could go, “Well I know X cop and they don’t seem so bad” and it’s like, well yeah, it’s possible they aren’t. The system is the primary issue and it transforms individuals into monsters, but it doesn’t transform them all equally and enforce it identically in every case. Some people who were cops during the 2020 protests in the US started quitting in response to it. I’ve heard of people in ICE quitting as well. This doesn’t absolve them of any wrongdoing they may have been involved in while they were in the role. It’s a point about change and the ability to transform. It’s either that or mass imprisonment or murder of everyone who was at some point a problem and the actual successful communist organizations in history have explicitly shown that you don’t always need to do this, even when dealing with people who took part in egregious wrongdoing. So why are some people in the west so stuck on refusing to learn from them and only willing to listen to the dimension of war and combat that the empire promotes?
Meanwhile, I don’t even see a militant left in the west to back up this attitude. I don’t see citizen tribunals. I don’t see consequences being brought down on documented offenders. Just a lot of posturing about what would hypothetically be done if we were the ones holding the guns.
The crux of it is: Is the goal to gain political power or to appear righteous? You can do both, but if you only do the 2nd one, you’re setting up to be a martyr, not a revolutionary.
I’m personally not at all interested in the success of a movement that is willing to go against everything it’s supposed to be about just to extend the olive branch to some Graham Platner type. If you’re willing to throw the world’s poorest under the bus just so that first worlders can have free healthcare and feel nice-fuzzy about having “rehabilitated” a child killer, then what’s even the point of calling yourself an anti-imperialist or Communist? At that point, just call yourself a liberal or a socdem.
Also, institutions are made up of people. They can’t exist without personnel that enable them to be, they have to be upheld by someone. You can’t have settler colonialism without settlers choosing to participate, you can’t have imperialism without people choosing to uphold it. Criticism of institutions is also criticism of people, they don’t pop out of nowhere and aren’t allowed to continue existing because of some invisible hand.
I’m personally not at all interested in the success of a movement that is willing to go against everything it’s supposed to be about just to extend the olive branch to some Graham Platner type. If you’re willing to throw the world’s poorest under the bus just so that first worlders can have free healthcare and feel nice-fuzzy about having “rehabilitated” a child killer, then what’s even the point of calling yourself an anti-imperialist or Communist? At that point, just call yourself a liberal or a socdem.
Good, I’m not either. What makes you think I am? Seriously, what exactly?
Also, institutions are made up of people. They can’t exist without personnel that enable them to be, they have to be upheld by someone. You can’t have settler colonialism without settlers choosing to participate, you can’t have imperialism without people choosing to uphold it. Criticism of institutions is also criticism of people, they don’t pop out of nowhere and aren’t allowed to continue existing because of some invisible hand.
So what exactly are you trying to promote as point of view here? In contrast to what? As a contrast to “individuals aren’t responsible for anything”? Cause nobody said that. As scientists of dialectical materialism, however, it is important to acknowledge the heavy ways in what material conditions influence people. If you refuse to acknowledge that and instead just insist on moralizing all day, what you get is a church, not a vanguard. You can enjoy the ivory tower feeling of being part of a church if you want. There are plenty to join and many that offer a pre-made feeling of superiority, so long as you adhere to their tenets. But few have any relationship to political power and the ones that do are heavily pragmatic, not just preaching.
So what exactly are you trying to promote as point of view here? In contrast to what? As a contrast to “individuals aren’t responsible for anything”?
Not saying that you’re guilty of this, but I’ve often gotten the impression that people who talk about stuff like the “poverty draft” or whatever genuinely think these people had zero responsibility in what they ended up doing. Same goes for stuff like “the government, not the people” which is …uhhhh.
it is important to acknowledge the heavy ways in what material conditions influence people.
Obviously this goes without saying. Personally though, I believe that it’s quite possible to acknowledge that these people aren’t ontologically immoral but ended up there because of real material reasons while also believing that they should be held accountable for their actions.
Not saying that you’re guilty of this, but I’ve often gotten the impression that people who talk about stuff like the “poverty draft” or whatever genuinely think these people had zero responsibility in what they ended up doing. Same goes for stuff like “the government, not the people” which is …uhhhh.
All I can say is, when it comes to people in this space specifically, I’ve never gotten the impression that there is any kind of broad intent to excuse, but more like to assess. So what I see in the “poverty draft” narrative is hoping, really (and maybe it’s wishful thinking if that narrative is full of holes). Because if people are joining more so cause they’re poor and need the money, that means: 1) they are less committed than the true believer generational military member type of person and 2) if given other opportunities, they are more likely to quit. e.g. their allegiance is more for sale than the true believer.
If, on the other hand, most are true believers and patriotic fanatics, that’s a much uglier situation to deal with and much harder to overcome. It would mean that the people who have the majority of the guns are also some of the most ideologically dedicated to upholding the empire, not just mercenaries for hire who are going to quit or cave under pressure, or if alternatives are presented to them.
Odds are not all of them are true believers. If the majority are, that would still be a major problem, but those who aren’t probably have a greater chance of being swayed in a conflict (and are also probably less likely to be among the ones who have directly participated in war crimes: the desk jockeys, logistics people, ones who spend more time at home on practice drilling for potential threats than they ever do deployed anywhere).
Obviously this goes without saying. Personally though, I believe that it’s quite possible to acknowledge that these people aren’t ontologically immoral but ended up there because of real material reasons while also believing that they should be held accountable for their actions.
I fully agree on that. The part that I keep circling back to though is the how. It’s not a trivial thing to get to the point where they can be systemically held accountable in the first place. Short of the US starting a war with China and China invading it, it’s not like there’s a major vanguard in the region who can stand up to them with any kind of parity. I’m not trying to say it’s hopeless, just that the fundamental asymmetry of the situation has to be accounted for somehow. Maybe thinking of it in terms of defectors is too limited thinking as strategy, but like, take the Black Panther Party for example. The military didn’t even need to get involved on that, as far as I know. FBI and cops was all it took to assassinate and destroy what they were doing. And they were a group that was serious about being militant, they weren’t playing footsie with elections as a saving grace.
That’s the kind of disparity it can look like. I don’t know if it’s that bad in other areas of the imperial core, but point being, we cannot expect some vanguard to materialize out of nowhere and take on the whole armed forces.
I’m under no delusions that something like all these guys being tried and sentenced for what they’ve done will ever happen in my lifetime. I’m simply not interested in having sympathy for them or being scolded for not liking them for things they did.
One thing I try to remind of, and what you wrote reminded me of, is this from On Revolutionary Medicine from Che Guevara.
We must, then, begin to erase our old concepts and begin to draw closer and closer to the people and to be increasingly aware. We must approach them not as before. You are all going to say, ‘No. I like the people. I love talking to workers and peasants, and I go here or there on Sundays to see such and such.’ Everybody has done it. But we have done it practising charity, and what we have to practice today is solidarity. We should not go to the people and say, ‘Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you our science, to show you your errors, your lack of culture, your ignorance of elementary things.’ We should go instead with an inquiring mind and a humble spirit to learn at that great source of wisdom that is the people.
I was actually thinking of writing a similar post. Moralism is a form of liberalism which permeates even within Communist spaces, and it’s something we all need to be aware of.
Talks With Mao Yüan-hsin July 5, 1964
| THE CHAIRMAN (staring angrily at Mao Yüan-hsin):
In fact, you like comfort, and fear difficulties. (The Chairman, in discussing the second criterion for successors, said:) You know how to think about yourself, you spend all your time pondering your own problems. Your father (Comrade Mao Tse-min) was dauntless and resolute in the face of the enemy, he never wavered in the slightest, because he served the majority of the people. If it had been you, wouldn’t you have got down on both knees and begged for your life? Very many members of our family have given their lives, killed by the Kuomintang and the American imperialists. You grew up eating honey, and thus far you have never known suffering. In future, if you do not become a rightist, but rather a centrist, I shall be satisfied. You have never suffered, how can you be a leftist?
|YÜAN-HSIN:
Is there still some hope for me?
|THE CHAIRMAN:
Well, yes, there is hope, but if you surpass the criteria I have set, that will be even better.
(The Chairman also talked about the third criterion, saying:) When you people hold a meeting, how do you hold it? You are a squad leader; how does one go about being a squad leader? When everyone criticizes you, can you accept it? Can you accept their criticisms even if they are wrong? Can you accept a false and unjust charge? If you cannot accept it, then how can you unite people? You must especially learn to work with people who disagree with you. If you like to have people praise you, if you like to have honey on your lips, and songs to your glory in your ears, that is the most dangerous thing, and that is exactly what you do like.
(In talking about the fourth criterion, the Chairman said:) Do you unite with the masses or not? Is it not the case that you spend your time with the sons and daughters of cadres, and look down on other people? You must let people talk, and not be satisfied with letting one person settle everything.
(In talking about the fifth criterion, the Chairman said:) In this respect you have already made some progress, you have engaged in a bit of self-criticism, but it’s barely a beginning, you mustn’t think everything is all right.
(Afterwards, the Chairman once again talked about the work at the Institute: The most fundamental defect of your Institute is that you have not applied the ‘four firsts’. Didn’t you say you wanted to study Marxism-Leninism? What method of study do you employ? How much can you learn merely by relying on listening to lectures? The most important thing is to go and learn from practice.
My own thoughts: If you’re trying to convince Imperialists to side with you, the best you can hope for is neutrality in most cases really. If you push them further it’s like talking to a parent about why their child doesn’t talk to them. This conversation requires too much spine to handle. They will immediately short circuit and start moralizing.
That’s what human being are like, in our age. The path of least resistance. This is not an inevitability and it won’t always be like this, but right now we’re going through a slow decomposition of the core, the violence of the periphery is accelerating this decomposition and sooner or later a sort of plague will burst open. All the trauma and hardship gathered down there since the establishment of settler colonial nation, that has never been addressed, it will be unable to be contained and burst. They didn’t want to deal with it because it’s too much, so it just gets bigger and they try to put colorful stickers and blue tape on rusted pipes they don’t want to fix.
They can’t imagine a future where they actually stand in unity. The best they can hope for is add another layer of paint, add another layer of paint, let the mold grow under, add another layer of paint.
Edited for spelling mistakes.
It’s kinda funny that we’ve written about more or less the same topic of morality around the same time. Looks like a lot of us have been wrestling with this topic, since other comrades have mentioned they wanted to make posts about it, too.
Nah I was homeless and sleeping out of a car and I didn’t sign up for the baby killing brigade. Miss me with all that. Someone always gotta think of the poor poor troops who had “no choice” but to sign up to be murderers, boo hoo
I think you are misunderstanding what material conditions are. It isn’t just wealth, “material conditions” are all the factors that influence the situation. Most of the time financial security is a major factor in peoples thinking but it isn’t the only thing. Some people don’t believe that joining the military means killing children because their unique conditions are flooded with imperialist propaganda and the truth hasn’t hooked in their brain yet.
Two main thoughts come to mind for me:
I think of the story of the “last emperor of China” who the CPC put to the challenge of reeducating (and succeeded): https://bsky.app/profile/poppyhaze.bsky.social/post/3lea2lmvmg22j
It demonstrates just how far you can go in changing a person sometimes. That is, when you have the power to do so and I think that is the main obstacle, as you touch on when you say “we have been unable to succeed against the overwhelming power of the imperialist bourgeoisie.”
It brings me to another, related (partly self-crit) of western thought, which is that of speaking as if we have power we don’t. So like, yes, the western imperial institutions have a lot of power and have had for a long time. But your average everyday liberal will tend to be at most possessing some minor influence over one minor organization or another. The majority of the power is concentrated in the hands of a minority of the population.
When one of us says some shit, it can influence some people, but it’s not the enacting of a broad policy or something. Same with when some random liberal mouths off. However, the type of thinking that goes with colonialism and imperialism instills in westerners a sense of power even when they materially have little (as we see with the bizarre behavior of a declining EU at times). Like a “believing your own lies” type of thing. This idea that the western is actually superior somehow and this means westerners just kinda wake up with smarter and brighter brains than the rest of the world, and this enables them to impact the world through that superiority alone. Instead of the reality: the guns, brutality, and mass murder campaigns that have fueled the actual power, which is, again, policy directed and power concentrated among the few, not the many, no matter how smug some of the many sound at times.
Unique material conditions are what lead each of us to class consciousness not some sort of moral/intellectual/educational supremacy.
I agree that moral superiority is not what got us there. We aren’t imbued with some kind of special trait that makes us better than others and that’s why we got where we did. However, I’d also caution against it sounding too close to a mechanical materialist view, that we didn’t have agency in the decisions but were led only by our material conditions. I don’t believe that’s what you intend to say. I just want to make the point out of caution for readers. Our choices do matter at some stage of it, but I would say, the more collectivist rather than faulty individualist view would be that many of our choices are more enmeshed in the choices of others than is sometimes comfortable to acknowledge (but we cannot possibly figure out how to enact change if we don’t recognize it). That we are not standing at the shore, looking out upon the sea, and deciding what the ocean is like. We are constantly in the ocean, the waves are real and immediate, and yes, we can swim and push and pull, but it is delusional for us not to acknowledge the heaviness of that.
Even cynical marketing campaigns understand this on some level. Word of mouth recommendation is one of the most powerful forms of sales. And notably, it is people speaking to each other and influencing one another, not people lining up at a booth for a marketing team to try to convince each of them individually, one at a time. Social ties are powerful and social fragmentation, both incidental as a result of capitalist development and purposeful as a tool of control, has reduced people’s effectiveness to rally together for getting needs collectively met.
Beliefs of moral superiority, intellectual superiority, hell superiority of preference for mundane things, can all exacerbate fragmentation and contribute to enforcing class/caste divides. We have to figure out how to transform society, not just analyze it as it is right now. That’s what fills me with awe about what China demonstrated in the story I mentioned. The transformative power that they had and continue to demonstrate in so many ways in the decades since.
(This went on a lot more than I thought it would when I said “two main thoughts” lol. It’s probably a bit more than two…)
I think of the story of the “last emperor of China”
You brought this story to my attention a little wile ago and it has made a big impact on my thinking. (It made me cry a little.) Obviously we don’t have the time/resources/capability to reeducate every reactionary but it really changed my mind on the limits of redeemability. There is no “too far gone” there is just “not enough time” or “not an efficient use of resources.”
I’m glad to hear it made such an impact on you. It really is a stunning thing to me, the transformative power coming from a communist vanguard. It makes me wonder actually if there are resources out there on how China went about reeducating people in methodology. I would imagine there is some kind of dialectical process going on in it.
And I agree 100% on how you put it: time and resources will always put constraints on that kind of thing. I have no illusions of being able to redeem everybody (nor do I think it’s the most pressing priority), but the fact that it’s possible at all to reeducate someone to that extent shows how far rehabilitation can go when used effectively.
