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.
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.
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.
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!
I was trying to be kinder and deliberately left out Nietzsche as I figured it would be a trigger word here.