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.
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):
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Huh? At what point does OP say we need to thank and glorify them?
Here are some important snippets from the post:
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?
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.
Good, I’m not either. What makes you think I am? Seriously, what exactly?
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.