Leftist Infighting: A community dedicated to allowing leftists to vent their frustrations

Most of the memes are fine but for some reason they have one saying either AES or Russia are fascist and we’re evil tankies for critically supporting them. The comments are strange. There’s Communists saying “you sound stupid when you say “tankie”.” And then when they get a reply they’re like “obviously I don’t support AES or Russia, stop grouping me with them.” There are a couple other people defending AES with me in the comments and one is a patsoc 💀.

https://www.initiative-cwpe.org/en/news/ON-THE-TERMINATION-OF-THE-ACTIVITY-OF-THE-EUROPEAN-COMMUNIST-INITIATIVE/

North Korea has also taken steps to strengthen the so-called "free economic zones", the "market", where the Workers' Party of Korea for several years has rejected Marxism-Leninism, promotes the idealistic theory "Juche", talks about "Kimilsugism - Kimgyongilism", violating every concept of socialist democracy, workers' people's control, within a regime of nepotism.

https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/The-International-role-of-China

TW for all sorts of fucked up shit

>“They gaslighted individuals with mental illness, they bullied people by harassing them, they crashed meetings they were not invited to (Tafadar and Khalil had attempted to crash gender struggle sessions, demanding that everyone surrender their phones for a search and seizure, like a hostage type of move), they threatened people with violence, and abused their leadership or popularity status as a way to avoid criticisms.”

I really recommend reading this, especially to Amerikan comrades and all comrades who feel ideologically inclined towards "Marxism-Leninism-Maoism [principally Maoism]".

>...a member of RGA’s Revolutionary Student Front is confronted by other members for consistent creepy, sexist, and manipulative behavior. Jared argues for him to remain a member through undergoing “rectification” through physical violence, a method that will become a feature of the cult. Carlos agrees to rectification, not believing he will actually be assaulted. He is beaten, after which he flees the state.

It really only continues to get worse.

>“Without letters our comrade has no contact with the outside world and he continues to not receive letters from the majority of his comrades. The consistent lack of initiative has forced the PPSC to take further action against the negligible support provided to our comrade. From now on a fine of 20 dollars will be given to those who have a personal relationship with our imprisoned comrade but fail to send out at least 1 letter monthly. The 20 dollars will go in a collection to support our imprisoned comrade’s wife and child."

It gets far, far worse.

This is by far the most interesting, detailed, and horrifying exposé I've seen regarding the Red Guards. In reading it, I believe there may be valuable insight on how to prevent ourselves from getting swept up in the political games of narcissistic opportunists. It is also crucial to be able to differentiate democratic centralism from "democratic centralism", lest any of us find ourselves stuck in a situation like this.

i am not very fond of anarchism as an ideology. It just cant function without contradicting its own principles....How in a revolution, or US intervention would strategic decisions be made? You cant just make everyone elect some shit every few hours during a war without somebody having to make decisions for other people. Or production? If you would like to have a car, or a house or whatever, you would need to ask hundreds of people for consent to produce the needed commodities as there is no state that regulates what and how much one should work....that would take a fucking long time which in return means not everyone gets to be supplied their needs. Anarchism is just not something you can achieve directly after a revolution, it needs to be gradual, when imperialist forces and other capitalist threats are annihilated, global socialism can deregulate its state-functions and transfer piece for piece more power to the people.

"...nah bro, it's still anarchist because they adhere to anarchist principles!!"

"...nah bro, the EZLN is actually anarchist even though they openly reject anarchism as their identity!!"

"...nah bro, it's not an expression of a colonialist attitude to appropriate the EZLN struggle as being part of my political beliefs!!"

It's astounding to me that western anarchists will defend to the death the right of trans people to self-identify but when a political struggle in the third world asserts its right to self-identify they'll steamroll it without a second thought.

Imagine claiming to reject unjust hierarchies and then placing yourself above the people of a movement to paternalistically appropriate their cause as being part of your own political ideology.

Here are the EZLN in their own words on the matter:

> The EZLN and its larger populist body the FZLN are NOT Anarchist. Nor do we intend to be, nor should we be. > > Over the past 500 years, we have been subjected to a brutal system of exploitation and degradation few in North America have ever experienced. > > It is apparent from your condescending language and arrogant short-sightedness that you understand very little about Mexican History or Mexicans in general. > > Our struggle was raging before anarchism was even a word, much less an ideology with newspapers and disciples. Our struggle is older than Bakunin or Kropotkin. We are not willing to lower our history to meet some narrow ideology exported from the same countries we fought against in our Wars for independence. The struggle in Mexico, Zapatista and otherwise, is a product of our histories and our cultures and cannot be bent and manipulated to fit someone else’s formula, much less a formula not at all informed about our people, our country or our histories. We as a movement are not anarchist. > > We see narrow-minded ideologies like anarchism... as tools to pull apart Mexicans into more easily exploitable groups. > > But what really enraged [us is] the familiar old face of colonialism shining through your good intentions. Once again we Mexicans [find ourselves put into a position where we] are not as good as the all knowing North American Imperialist who thinks himself more aware, more intelligent and more sophisticated politically than the dumb Mexican. This attitude, though hidden behind thin veils of objectivity, is the same attitude that we have been dealing with for 500 years, where someone else in some other country from some other culture thinks they know what is best for us more than we do ourselves. > > Once again, the anarchists in North America know better than us about how to wage a struggle we have been engaged in since 300 years before their country was founded and can therefore, even think about using us as a means to “advance their project.” That is the same exact attitude Capitalists and Empires have been using to exploit and degrade Mexico and the rest of the third world for the past five hundred years. > > Even though [you talk] a lot about revolution, the attitudes and ideas held by [you] are no different than those held by Cortes, Monroe or any other corporate imperialist bastard you can think of. Your intervention is not wanted nor are we a “project” for some high-minded North Americans to profit off. > > So long as North American anarchists hold and espouse colonialist belief systems they will forever find themselves without allies in the third world. The peasants in Bolivia and Ecuador, no matter how closely in conformity with your rigid ideology, will not appreciate your condescending colonial attitudes anymore than would the freedom fighters in Papua New Guinea or anywhere else in the world. > > Colonialism is one of the many enemies we are fighting in this world and so long as North Americans reinforce colonial thought patterns in their “revolutionary” struggles, they will never be on the side of any anti-colonial struggle anywhere. We in the Zapatista struggle have... asked the world to... respect the historical context we are in and think about the actions we do to pull ourselves from under the boots of oppression.

Source

(Excuse the minimisation that the editor feels compelled to engage in with their mention of "the subtle colonialist tendencies" and in saying "it is unclear whose voice is this Zapatista response, which uses 'we' to speak for all on such important themes. We [My note: Who is 'we'? It is unclear whose voice in this editorial note which uses 'we' to speak for all on such important themes...] fully agree that arrogance toward the struggles in Mexico should have no part in any commentary. Perhaps it is also worth asking whether centralization and representation can be anti-authoritarian?" — does the editor have no shame and no capacity for insight? Did they even listen to the author before typing this out? It's remarkable that this editor's royal "we" applies a standard of demanding proof of consensus from the EZLN in their communications which is entirely absent from their concern when other movements write or when Subcommandante Marcos writes but is not directly criticising western anarchists, not to mention in their own editorial note itself. They are setting their own personal standards for how they define the terms centralisation and anti-authoritarian then they're projecting this onto the EZLN and concern-trolling over what they assume to be the EZLN falling short of the editor's standards. Way to miss the point, guys!)

Makes you wonder why the most committed anarchists would go to the Ukraine to fight if they weren't really anarchists in the first place.

If the anarchists were really as disorganised as this article paints them to be, any adventurist would have had much better luck finding their way to the front through virtually any other route than as an anarchist.

Notice the unfalsifiable orthodoxy that kicks in in the editorial note, immediately dismissing any anarchist who joined the Azov Battalion or the OUN as being a false anarchist since joining with fascists disqualifies your from being an anarchist. That's very convenient and all but the lack of self-crit shown in this article is astounding.

Named after Iskra, but not a single book by Lenin, 3 by Trotksy and even a couple anarchists. This is the trend among university "communists" over here. If a revolution was successful, it must've not been a real revolution, except for the aesthetics.

This is a persistent myth that is shared amongst anarchists and RadLibs alike that the Soviets betrayed the Makhnovists by reneging on their so-called alliance with the Black Army, turning on them immediately after the defeat of the White Army.

This furnishes the anarchist persecution fetish and common narratives about how communists will always betray "the true revolution" and how Lenin was a tyrant.

The historical facts, however, paint a significantly different picture.

For one, you do not sign pacts with your allies. There was a military pact that was signed but, like the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, this is something that occurred between two parties that were constantly at odds with each other and the pact was signed out of conditions where the interests of both parties were temporarily aligned. This simple fact escapes the historical revisionists constantly but, unsurprisingly, only when it serves their arguments.

Secondly, Makhno himself knew that this pact was only temporary. Upon the signing of the pact he had this to say in The Road to Freedom, the Makhnovists' mouthpiece, in October 13, 1920:

"Military hostilities between the Makhnovist revolutionary insurgents and the Red Army have ceased. Misunderstandings, vagueness and inaccuracies have grown up around this truce: it is said that Makhno has repented of his anti-Bolshevik acts, that he has recognized the soviet authorities, etc. How are we to understand, what construction are we to place upon this peace agreement?

What is very clear already is that no intercourse of ideas, and no collaboration with the soviet authorities and no formal recognition of these has been or can be possible. We have always been irreconcilable enemies, at the level of ideas, of the party of the Bolshevik-communists.

We have never acknowledged any authorities and in the present instance we cannot acknowledge the soviet authorities. So again we remind and yet again we emphasize that, whether deliberately or through misapprehension, there must be no confusion of military intercourse in the wake of the danger threatening the revolution with any crossing-over, 'fusion' or recognition of the soviet authorities, which cannot have been and cannot ever be the case." [Source: Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack by Skirda and Sharkey, pp. 200-201]

Clearly these are not the words that allies speak about one another.

At the successful Seige of Perekop, whereby the Red and Black Armies successfully broke the back of Wrangel's White Army forces and brought the Southern front to a conclusion, Makhno's aide-de-camp Grigori Vassilevsky, pronounced the end of the pact, proclaiming:

"That's the end for the agreement! Take my word for it, within one week the Bolsheviks are going to come down on us like a ton of bricks!" [Source: Nestor Makhno: Anarchy's Cossack by Skirda and Sharkey, p.238]

The fact is that USSR furnished the Black Army with much-needed military supplies without which they would have been unable to continue fighting and Makhno was no pluralistic leader who was open to Bolsheviks; in fact, his army incorporated Bolshevik forces which defected to the Black Army and Makhno set his military secret police force, the Kontrrazvedka, to at first surveil the former Bolshevik military leaders along with the rising Bolshevik influence that had developed particularly around Yekaterinoslav, and then later summarily executed the Bolshevik leaders when they posed too much of a threat to his power due to commanding some of the strongest units in his army.

But that's a topic which deserves its own post...

I think it makes some points. Does anyone more knowledgeable on this subject have a different take?

I'm astonished at how sensitive the mods must be over there.

Apparently you're allowed to say whatever baseless slander you like about the eeeeevil tankies but the minute someone says "Hold up a sec, you claim to be anti-authoritarian and yet you support authoritarianism either explicitly or implicitly?" and they have to shut it down immediately.

Regardless, I think I made a pretty solid counterargument to the typical complaint about communism being authoritarian.

Mfers skim read the Wikipedia entry on Hannah Arendt and start thinking they're justified in slinging accusations about "muh authoritarianism" smh.

Jesus fucking christ. For me, as an Ukrainian, it's such a fucking shame that our country, on one of the biggest platforms on the internet, is represented by a fucking NAZI BATTALION SYMBOL. FUCK OFF.

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I got this from Socialist Roaders

Just making some light of it to the international community.

The PCB is currently under fire for housing an academiscist, revisionist and "enfortressed" Central Committe. They're ignoring their own proceedures, are hostile to the party's democratic centralism and are removing more radical members of the party (specially those with a large online presence that have more agency over boots-on-the-ground organizing, like Jones Manuel).

This comes at a weird point as the party (and other ML parties) seem to be growing due to effective online presence of Marxist-Leninists in the brazilian internet.

After reading some discussion on lemmygrad about veganism, I felt the need to share my thoughts in a separate thread, as comments weren't appropriate for the wall of text I'm about to throw.

Before we start, very important precision. This is not about environmental veganism, only about animal-liberation veganism. Consuming less animal products will be a lifestyle change we must anticipate to limit environmental destruction. This is about the moral philosophy of veganism and its contradictions with materialism.

Intro

Veganism is often rationalised under the form of a syllogism : it is immortal to kill and exploit humans, and non-human animals are equal to humans, therefore, it is immoral to kill and exploit non-human animals.

Now, I must say, if one is to contest the validity of this syllogism as a basis for veganism I encourage them to provide one since it could drastically change my point of view.

Like many syllogisms, there is appeal and validity to it until you question the premises. Let's review them under a materialistic lens.

Morality and materialism

The first premise is that it is immortal to kill and exploit humans. As leftists, we tend to wholeheartedly agree with such a statement, as it encapsulates our ambitions and dreams, however this cannot be pursued for a political manifest beyond utopian wishful thinking. Historically, killing has been justified as a high moral act whenever the one being killed was deemed worthy of death. The reason it is generally considered immoral to interrupt one's life is because humans simply have to collaborate to survive, therefore every society has developed a social construct that allows us to live as a social productive species. But whenever a war enemy, criminal, or dissident person is being killed under certain circumstances, the killing becomes justified, morally right.

As materialists, we don't base our interpretation of morality on a notion of some metaphysical, reality-transcending rule, and even less in relation to an afterlife. Morality is a human construct that evolves with material conditions. In that case, the relationship of human morality with non-human animals becomes more complicated than it seems. Humans do have empathy for other species but are also able to consume their flesh and products, a contradiction that has defined the construction of morality around non-human animals through history. This explains why it seems desirable for a lot of people to stop unnecessary animal cruelty while still wanting to consume their flesh, there is an act of balancing between empathy and appetite.

Equality of species and violence

Now you might have noticed that this framework is definitely human-centric. That brings us to the second premise, which is the equality of all species. By all means, it is absolutely outdated to maintain the idea of "human superiority" on all non-human species in the current times. As materialists, we should realise that humans evolved at the same time as other species, are dependent on the ecosystem, and that there is no fundamental variable that we have to consider as a criteria for ranking in an abstract "order of things".

That said, the equality of all species doesn't automatically mean the disappearance of inter-species violence. Firstly, we cannot stop unnecessary violence between fellow living beings that don't share our means of communication (unless we exerce physical control over them, but that's even worse). Secondly, there is an assumption that only humans possess the ability to choose to follow a vegan diet, which is extremely strange considering that it makes humans the only specie to have the capacity to be moral. Either non-human animals are excused for their chauvinistic violence against other species because they are seen as too limited, determined by their instinct, but it makes humans actually morally superior to other species. Or the animals must be held accountable for inter-species violence, which no vegan upholds, thankfully. Last option would be to consider that inter-species violence is part of life, which I agree with and think is the materialistic approach, but that means there is no reason to adopt a vegan diet.

Conclusion

So what does that let us with? Morality being a social construct with a material use in a human society, and humans being fundamentally empathetic, it is completely understandable that society will be progressing towards diminishing meat consumption to allow the minimization of animal suffering. But the exploitation of animals as means of food production doesn't have a materialistic reason to go away (unless we're talking about climate change, of course). The inter-species violence of humans against cattle and prey is part of nature, because we simply are a productive omnivorous specie just like any other.

This is mostly why I would discourage pushing people to abandon all animal products in the name of ethics. What should be encouraged is acceptance of every specific diet, be it religious diets, or animal-liberation diets. Strict vegetarianism must be a choice of heart that is based on profound empathy, not a superior moral choice or, worse, a moral imperative.

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Spicy question maybe, but I'm interested in your takes.

Personally, I think there's some major issues with at least the terminology of the 2 phase model of lower/higher stage communism or socialism/communism as the terms are used in classical theory. Specifically the 'lower stage' or 'socialism' term is problematic.

In the age of revision and after the success of counterrevolution it has become clear that there is in fact a transitional phase leading up to the classical transitional phase. Societies did not jump from developed capitalism to socialism immediately and even the states that arguably did were forced to roll back some of the core tenets of 'socialism' as it is described in Marx, Engels and Lenin. Namely no private ownership of the means of production and no exploitation of man by man.

To ultras this just means countries following this path aren't socialist. So then China isn't, Cuba isn't, no country still is really and those of us claiming they are then have to be revisionists. And to be fair, if you're dogmatic you can make that point going from the source material. China itself recognizes this inconsistency, thus not seeing itself at the stage of socialism. Yet it's a socialist state. But then what do we actually mean by 'socialism' when we use the term like this? Just a dictatorship of the proletariat? Any country in the process of building socialism?

That question comes up all the time and confuses the fuck out of people, because the term is either not applied consistently or as it's defined is lacking. I think discourse in the communist movement and about AES would profit immensely if we had a more consistent definition or usage of the term or a better defined concept of what that transition to socialism is and how we should call it.

For context purple thinks Cornel West should be supported, and they imply my “purity fetishism” is why communists haven’t had electoral success.

Yes, 1991. And it was forced to grant it

So, I'm not cool with genocide. Not cool with that at all. Even if they are landlords. I'm much more in favor of reeducation centers, personally. I'm against the death penalty on moral grounds. I believe that everyone deserves a second and third chance.

With that said, economically, I consider myself to be anarcho-communist or communalist or "left-communist" or whatever the fuck you want to call it.

But apparently all of that makes me a lib, and not welcome on the left? Is that correct?

This will probably be one of Rainer's most controversial articles to date.

I'm seeing a bunch of controversy surrounding which socialist organizations to join and I've heard the best things/least bad things about the PSL. Is this true?

In a recent call on the national question someone asked about how some people say the United States is not a legitimate nation because of settler colonialism and he said he knew it was obviously wrong but was wondering what their mistake is. Someone claimed that “landback” people never have a clear policy proposal. And I was shocked and hoping it could be rectified. Next was said in response that it’s true as Stalin said that the US became a nation when it left Britain because it was a specific group of settlers, but it expanded through brutal means and that should be rectified. After a while into the call eventually the issue was returned to. The fact that there are still many indigenous tribes within the US and therefore should be given their original land and sovereignty was said. In response people said that it would make them to isolated from the union and they have the option to have that sovereignty from their reservations, but obviously choose not to, which is absurd because these states should also get lots of aid and solidarity from other socialist areas (as this would be after the revolution and it would be different to now). I thought it was bad enough but after it was said that primarily settler colonial nations need their histories rectified they said that they don’t even oppose the existence of Israel anymore. Then the gensec said that people are ignoring “dialectics” that things change. People move in and out of territory- (though usually not by genocide)- and therefore the US is no different and we should not try to change that. “All the slaves are dead.”-Though people are still affected by that history, native Americans are still under special oppression by the state, and in the case of Palestine people are still alive that can remember having their land stolen and have physical evidence that it belonged to them- according to another “some Marxists read Marx and Lenin and come to the opposite conclusions” suggesting those bad Marxists are the “land-back” people.

Whoever warned me that they were PatSocs are right. What should I do? Is there hope of convincing them? Should I leave ASAP? Should I wait? It’s been mentioned here that we should follow the leadership of BIPOC people, does anyone know the modern equivalent of the White Panthers or AIM I should join?

Edit: I forget to mention the made the point that refugees are coming here now and if we do landback there would be refugees from here-like, sure people’d have to move but we’ve got space, and aren’t our birth rates declining anyway? It’s not like there’ll be an anti-white trail of tears. With socialist central planning we can allocate resources to support evicted settlers. Also, there’s a whole lotta land that’s privately owned that could easily be expropriated for indigenous people along with national parks which they’d manage far better. I think they also suggested that we need to integrate Native Americans as much as possible because their sovereignty won’t help. Finally, apparently they would’ve supported the new Afrikan struggle in the 30’s, but since I guess they don’t think you can fight fascism and racism and colonialism at the same time.

Communist Party of TERF Island Britain released a statement which includes the following questionable (and downright transphobic) statements:

States that the Gender Recognition Bill is a failure, and does not support it in any way, essentially siding with England because of their antagonism.

States that the bill will only bring confusion and legal chaos, because Scotland doesn't align with the UK

Claims that you need gender dysphoria to be trans, essentially falling into the transmedicalist ideology

Opposes both Scotland and Wales decision to allow people to change their gender regardless of gender dysphoria, utilising a TERF argument of "men" being predators in women-only and children spaces

Believes in Gender Ideology, and claims that "Gender Ideology" suits the capitalist class despite transphobic media being rampant especially in the UK

Anyways, if anyone supports CPTI (CPB), I hope you realise that they're no longer a good party.

Update: CPB has released a post saying that they won't be silenced. It just shows transphobic they are.

https://www.codepink.org/march18

Nationwide protests shot off on the 18th and 19th. Did you see any coverage?

The revolution will not be televised. RATWM is a fascist maneuvering and nothing more, attempting to recoup some of the brewing anti-war sentiment back into supporting capitalism and by extension imperialism. Libertarians, pedo "communists", and outright fascists? We don't fucking need them and I find it frustrating when people seem to think we do.

RATWM was televised because it was backed by money. Dirty, bloody money coming from the likes of the Paul political dynasty. Their pathetic little gathering was not the revolutionary moment some people seemed to imply it was. It was a farce. The people will rise up and they won't need ghoulish demagogues to pay them to.

This might be controversial but i'd trust an ultra who had done work irl and done their reading than someone who is ideologically correct but most of their activism is just reading posts and arguing other people online. Like, at least those people, with the proper guidance, and their own experience will come to the right conclusion eventually or make way for a new generation of comrades more equipped to deal with the current situation after their failures become apparent.

I was an online activists too for a couple of years when i was teenager and my ideological development stuck for the longest time until I join an org and went from anarchist to marxist leninist in just a few months. And I was literally in a trot org back then!

It's just, the material conditions im in is pretty bad and my country's decades long history of exterminating leftist sympathizers made it hard to find other comrades yknow. I have some, but we have to work overtime just to keep up and we couldnt be that choosy of who we're working with sometimes. We cant just pick a readymade marxist who already agreed with all of our basic tenets, we have to do the work on educating them and that means talking to them one on one or in a group setting for months just to completely clean off the red scare and internalized racism. I had to sacrifice a lot of time and energy, and being targeted by hate groups when there's not many ppl who could help you is scary.

So sometimes I look at some posters and news online on twitter, and instagram, and see these so called indonesian communists who labeled themselves a comrade but spent almost everyday online doing leftist infighting more than praxis, posting completely irrelevant memes or even make agitprop not for our own heavily propagandized country but for the western left. Shit like that makes me want to kill with hammers! I would bet theyre not a part of any org because no one I know (irl and online) whose already a part of an org can dedicate that much time for online frivolities. No left tendency is exempt from this, even if youre an ML. The cause is a combination of slacktivism coupled with a terminal case of social media turning you to a USian and a sprinkle of sectarianism. This isn't a team sports or a chance to own people you dork! aren't you a communist because you want better things for humanity? to help people? Then where are you if youre not in the streets?

It's very clear that TikTok causes brain rot:

• hours upon hours of scrolling;
• damaged attention spans;
• boring lip sync "memes";
• whatever the fuck my little brother is watching;
• KKKringy song over equally KKKringe footage;
• TWs for almost literally anything. I've seen [TW: Aesthetic];
• iPad kids

You know? This applies to YT shorts. Now my attention span is so short I can't even read theory for 5 minutes without thinking "What's on TikTok?"

Let's not even forget the KKKringe-ass use of 733tspeak, wtf man.

If I ever have kids, I'd waste my entire bank account just to stop them from getting in this hellhole of a site.

Not that I like the guy, I'm curious as to our thoughts on him.

What is this hexbear rule? We are becoming the strawman fascists are making of us Edit: furthermore I think this does not help federation at all, I think we should follow the same principle that is used in extradition: it must be illegal in both states in order for the person to be extradite, or it needs to be illegal on both platforms to be removed, but again, that might lead to problems if a community deems racist jokes, for example, not illegal so we can't do much about it, it's an headache. Edit 2: i think I could be misunderstood easily, Im not attacking the platform, just saying that that's a generally stupid rule.

A good refutation of the ‘KPD is to blame for the Third Reich’ myth is Sergio Bologna’s Nazism and the working class, which focuses more on class analysis (!!!) than blaming ‘the left’ or the Comintern or Moscow or specifically Joseph Stalin for almost everything that went wrong. (It’s also a big surprise coming from libcom.org—of all things—hilariously enough.) Anyway, our theory noob here claims that

>the KPD […] rejected several offers from the SPD to enter coalition to stop the rise of Nazism

While there is some truth to this, when we actually examine the relations between the SPD and the KPD in context, as Nazism and the working class does, the reasons for this refusal were more complicated than how she presented them. She also claims that the

>KPD and NSDAP also essentially collaborated during the late 1920s and early 1930s to undermine Weimar democracy both as a matter of street violence and using institutional means

By which she meant

>in history books you too often find the thesis that the Nazis and Communists went side by side to fight against the institutions of Weimar, and you frequently find reference to the two episodes in which they found themselves in a united front against the Socialist Party: the public transport strike in Berlin in Autumn 1932, and the referendum against the Prussian government under Otto Braun; you almost never hear of the physical clashes which took place between proletarians organised by the KPD and the [Fascist] gangs.

What was wrong with this Prussian government (or ‘Weimar democracy’) under Braun? Sergio Bologna provides us with a clue:

>Now, Prussia was governed not so much by the Social Democratic party as such, as by some of its more prestigious exponents. They had considerable power, and they were located on the extreme Right of the party. The key man in Prussia, for many years prime minister of the Prussian government, was Otto Braun, a man of open and declared authoritarian tendencies, who saw the role of social democracy as being in maintaining law and order, in the untouchability of the state bureaucra[c]y, and in a corporative partnership between trade unions and big capital. In the words of Theodor Eschenburg, the author of a fine book on the problem of "ungovernability" in the Weimar Republic, he was in favour of a "recallable dictatorship". Otto Braun's principal collaborator was for many years Albert Grzesinski, who was Minister of the Interior in Prussia, and from 1930 was also head of police in Berlin. > >We should not forget that during this period the Social Democrats had considerable powers in the area of law and order, because in 1928 one of their number, Carl Severing, was appointed Minister of the Interior of the Reich. The SPD took advantage of this to institute an extremely efficient reorganisation of the police, with the principal aim of setting up a special corps to prevent Bolshevik disturbances and uprisings. Unfortunately they were not equally efficient and motivated in preventing and repressing [Fascist] gangsterism. The situation inevitably aggravated the historic fracture between Social Democrats and Communists that had already existed since the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht - a fracture which experienced a particularly acute moment - a point of "no return" - in the events of Mayday 1929. > >[…] > >Mayday 1929 in Berlin fell in an atmosphere that was particularly tense, due partly to the onset of economic crisis and partly to the onset of a crisis of the political system. > >The police chief in Berlin, a Social Democrat by name of Zorgiebel, had already banned all public demonstrations in Berlin in December 1928. In March 1929 he extended the ban to the whole of Prussia, and then renewed the ban specifically for Mayday 1929, asking the trade unions to abstain from public demonstrations and to organise only indoor meetings. The Communists, however, decided to challenge the ban and to demonstrate in the streets. The Social Democratic trade unions and the SPD organised their Mayday events in theatres, association offices etc. The Communist slogan was: "We do not accept the ban. We shall demonstrate in the streets, and if the police try to attack we shall call a general strike for the next day." And so it was to be. > >The police, as has been shown from research in police archives, mounted a deliberate attack, organised by special anti-subversion units. There were violent clashes, which spread to include workers who were coming out of the indoor meetings of the Social Democratic trade unions. The Communist Party called a general strike for the following day, but despite pressure from many militants did not distribute weapons; nevertheless, in the quarters of Neukolln and Wedding the barricades went up and the police had to lay siege to the areas for three days before they were able to restore order. > >The final balance was extremely heavy: thirty people dead, all of them demonstrators; 200 wounded; 1,200 people arrested, of whom 44 were kept in custody by the police. The Prussian Minister of the Interior seized this opportunity to ban the mass organisations of the Communist Party. > >These events brought about an unhealable fracture between Communist militants, and the Social Democratic party and its organisations. Oral history research has shown that in the memory of proletarian militants (not only communists) this was a turning point, a "point of no return" in their remembrance of their total alienation from anything to do with the SPD. Whereas the killings of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht might possibly have been attributed to the Freikorps and not purely to Noske's policies, the blame for the repression of Mayday 1929 in Berlin lay squarely at the door of Social Democratic ministers and functionaries. This trauma split the working class down the middle, right on the eve of the final clash with the [Fascist] militias.

(Emphasis added.)

With all of this in mind, it should not be hard at all to understand why the KPD would turn down the SPD’s late offers for a ‘coalition’ (probably under some very important terms and conditions that somebody neglected to mention, I suspect) against fascism. Given that the succdems were so lazy at suppressing fascism, I really doubt that a coalition would have made an enormous difference anyway.

As for why the Fascists wished to suppress German Social Democracy, hopefully it goes without saying that their reasons were very different from those of the Communists, which probably explains why their collaboration — if you’d call it that — was so sporadic and ultimately meaningless. It just goes to show that being right for the wrong reasons is hardly better than being wrong to begin with.

Hi wisconcom. I know you can read this message, so don't bother saying you haven't. For others who do not know about him, just know that he's a "Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist" (or Hoxhaist).

You keep going on this website, trying to infiltrate it in one way or another, defending yourself when you're being threatened. I have countless examples of your alts. One example is 'Sickomus', who wrote a 'critique' on my essay in Prolewiki. You defended yourself with another account as well, showing your clear cowardice: ! How about you going on RationalWiki and changing your username so that you can hide away from your edits on ProleWiki? !

I just wanna ask some questions. Why do you do this? What do you hope to achieve by doing this? If you're doing to 'trash Tankies and Dengists', then why are you bothering to literally blend in with us to begin with?

!

Even RationalWiki editors (whom are liberals) know that you're obsessed. This is just laughable at this point.

!

If you're just doing this to combat 'revisionism' or some other bullshit, then why are you not at all concerned that you're literally on rationalwiki? A website, which literally claims that communism is a totalitarian ideology: !

What problem does fighting revisionism have? Nothing by itself. But you care more about fighting revisionism more than fighting capitalism. Therefore you're helping US imperialism.

I would like to end off this message by stating this: !

Good day.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/465610

> As an artist, I think it is a net negative for us. Disregarding the copyright issue, I think it's also consolidating power into large corporations, going to kill learning fundamental skills (rip next generation of artists), and turn the profession into a low skill minimum wage job. > Artists that spent years learning and perfecting their skills will be worth nothing and I think it's a pretty depressing future for us. > Anways thoughts?

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/452108

> It was linked to be by a @Sickomus as a source of history regarding ProleWiki. As you might expect it is is full of his normal social imperialist talking points and such. Also he calls himself a "Marxist Leninist Stalinist" now instead of his previous Hoxhaist beliefs for some reason.

Okay, first of all, with the arguable exception of trolling, there is really no need to bother engaging with confirmed antisocialists (especially billionaires). It doesn’t matter how many sources you offer if they have no interest in checking one for more than ten seconds. You can’t force or compel them to be interested in learning; they have to hit rock‐bottom first, then—when they have little or nothing to lose and it almost seems like life couldn’t possibly get any worse—they’ll be more open to socialism. For now, you are better off doing something else.

Twoth, the response ‘Venezuela isn’t socialist’, while agreeable in principle, just isn’t a very productive or interesting response to offer. The accusation ‘socialism destroyed Venezuela’ is wrong not simply because the BRV is presocialist. It’s also wrong because it ignores why leftist politicians assumed power in the Venezuela in the first place, and it is wrong because it ignores the devastation that antisocialists—both from within and without—have been afflicting upon it for decades. The sanctions, guarimbas, the destruction of foodstuff, and so on—these should not be ignored, trivialized, or misjudged as ‘our responsibility’, and repeatedly doing either only encourages everybody to think of antisocialists as unaccountable for their atrocities.

Lastly (and call me an ultraleftist if you’d like), I’d argue that the definition of socialism that we should prefer is the negation of capitalism, that is to say, the abolition of generalized commodity production, the law of value, and capital. Seizing the means of production is good, of course, but is it enough to prevent exploitation? I’m afraid that the answer is no, not in a market economy.

I don’t want to sound too harsh on the SPGB, as they’re clearly well intentioned and probably nice people who belong to the same lower classes as we do, but replying critically to the upper classes is like trying to stop a Magach with a stone.