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.
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.