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.
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.