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poor leftists talk about poverty, labor aristocrats get uncomfortable and insist that sociological classes aren’t materialist. “all that matters is that we’re working class - we’re all in this together”
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black leftists talk about racism, whites get uncomfortable and insist that they’re not personally part of the problem. “we mustn’t allow the bourgeois to divide the proletariat along racial lines - we’re all in this together”
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female leftists talk about patriarchy, men get uncomfortable and insist that it hurts them too. “this men vs women stuff is reductive anyway - we’re all in this together”
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third world leftists talk about imperialism, americoids get uncomfortable and insist that red white and blue lives matter too. “what happened to the international working class - we’re all in this together”
you don’t have to invite yourself to every form and experience of oppression. anyone with a baby’s consciousness of intersectionality ought to be capable of admitting when they have privilege
These arguments only work when they’re not being used to ignore the problems when they’re also occurring among the left. Anyone that deploys them argument when it is occurring within the left just help to alienate and split away the affected group.
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I’d rather a cis white male see me as a comrade than acknowledge the black struggle
This you?EDIT: My bad.
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All I recall is you being class reductionist, acting like intersectionality wasn’t an important part of the revolutionary struggle, and calling minority rights individualism. And don’t forget, you’re not the only minority here, you don’t speak for the rest of us.EDIT: Yeah, upon rereading, I totally misinterpreted what you said. Just got a hair trigger from the current struggle session I guess. This one’s on me, comrade. My bad.
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Tbh, I think maybe we’re speaking past each other, because these comments are something I can absolutely understand. Maybe I misunderstood your previous comments, because to me, they came off extremely class reductionist and dismissive of other marginalized people’s struggles. I’m sorry, comrade.
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No worries! I can definitely relate to not articulating myself well. It definitely takes some getting used to coming from the lib hell that is
lol. And I came in immediately with snark myself, so it’s not just on you.
I hope you stay around because I see your perspective, and I think if you wait and let hexbears have a struggle sesh then they will be able to see it too. Because as a cishet white guy, it was actually really important for me to get to the line that these other commenters keep repeating: that the place where workers feel the effects of of their economic exploitation is usually some social distinction like race/gender/ethnicity/expression. I also believe that capital and value are real and temporal, condensed laboring time of workers, and if I understand all of this correctly, a huge amount of the cultural and social capital, basically anything new, or persisting from slavery and indigenous dispossession and genocide, as well as everything in between (carcerial and police repression, extreme exploitation of demonized immigrants), is composed disproportionately of the value of the toil, extracted through extreme violence, of BIPoC around the world.
OTOH, I don’t relate to black comrades as a racialized social relation. We are all volunteers so the people who are working together are there because they got their ass out to work together to get something done, or aid in people’s struggles, or plan and even just bullshit in off time.
It seems like there is what leftist believe that certain positions on race “need to” or are “supposed to” be, because of the compound legacies of imperialism and colonialism and patriarchy, etc., especially with regards to whites like me, but those positions can end up flattening the lived experience of people into a collection of historical figures and facts, an object instead of a person. But what this disconnect is, what it is called for example, if it exists, idk if there’s a name for it. So like so many problems, people disagree over things they don’t have the language to understand yet.
Anyway, I appreciate your comments, comrade. Thanks.
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We all have a ton of issues to work through, I hope you will be patient with us as I genuinely think HBs are acting in good faith! But we are all developing in different ways and at different rates. I’m sure you’re able to recognize some ways in which you could become a better comrade, and part of that is by interacting principally with other principled politicized workers.
Unfortunately, in my organizing I have not yet encountered the movement that will stand a chance against imperialism. So until I find it or it finds me, I have to try to build it, out of the paved over wasteland of the american labor movement. It takes more patience and personal development than I ever anticipated. But at least I know I’m not completely alone. Our only hope is in each other, in solidarity. Hopelessness is to lose sight of that.
Anyway, thanks for your patience and strength. Sticking with it helps us to recognize and confront issues we encounter with other comrades. Sometimes it seems like we are the only ones who see a real problem with the way others approach problems that crop up as a result of left organizing and, while it could be a sign that we just aren’t compatible with a group’s beliefs, it could also be a sign that we are just a little ahead of our comrades in certain areas, and we can bring them up to speed and strengthen the movement in doing so.
In other words, quantitative inputs over time add up to great qualitative change. It can be slow process but we have to believe it to be successful, as every successful socialist movement has recognized the political effectiveness of dialectical change
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There was a second comment that was removed as well further down the chain.
it seems that I totally had his number too. saying “intersectionality is economically challenged” - idk how this is even a discussion it’s classic stupidpol
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“Patriotic socialist” is someone who combines false consciousness nationalist populism with non intersectional and exclusionary class politics. Like “dictatorship of the proletariat” but then will define the proletariat very narrowly and chauvinistically. Its a common grift. Socialism wrapped in an american flag (and all that it entails).
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I would say no. Patriotic Socialism is more like the movement that inspired the Nazis to add “socialism” to their name. The CCP has a nationalistic quality, like you have to be born in China to hold positions in the party, but for example there is proportional representation, they really make sure their minority populations are properly represented in the government and party. Patsocs try to use the contradictions that arise as a result of trying to reform a nation, and movements that push for progressive reforms for all, to make it into progressive reforms for some, if not completely derailing any progressive agenda. Sometimes patsocs will make appeals to the nationalist character of China or Cuba to argue for patriotic socialism, but I’ve never seen it argued for in good faith. People are either confused or lying, regardless of what anyone thinks about the CCP, they helped the Chinese people organize and defend themselves. No patsoc movement has ever come within 1000 miles of relevance, let alone victory (unless you count Nazis which wouldn’t be a victory for progress!)
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That’s a really interesting way of looking at it! I think that the reason they get equated is that the material effect had been historically the same. Patsocs advocate for socialist policies, but ideologically restrict who does and doesn’t get the benefit. Class reductionists advocate for socialist policies for all, but when the time comes to redistribute wealth, geez you know we really tried. So like the american socialist movements of the early 20th century, moved popular support for socialism all the way to a New deal. But Black workers were excluded from union membership or any of the benefits of the new deal, until the UAW started admitting black workers in Detroit decades later. So even though the messaging was completely different, the historical effect was the same. If workers have the power to demand truly transformative reforms, like new deal policies, then we have to actually push beyond that because the ruling class is never going to let it go down the way we know it has to. They will always fight back with extreme violence. Anything we win has to be defended and we can only defend it if everyone is on board to defend it, and not everyone will be on board if it leaves most people out. Maybe it wins temporary concessions for some, but we are communists, dammit! It’s all or we fighting. Its not enough for the workers to be united. We have to be united in struggle, or we will never get there. At least that’s what I think.
A black professor of mine (really cool guy his class has us read Wretched of the Earth) told me why he doesn’t go near communism anymore is because every time he tried to engage with marxists in america, they were these fucking morons.
It is actively alienating people we should be listening to and working with. I have no respect for the left here, they don’t deserve it.
A lot of what you are describing here is why leftism is dysfunctional in the west. Since leftism in the west isn’t always a matter of material survival, western leftists use it to hyper-individualize themselves. Essentially they use leftist ideology to try to improve their class/conditions within a capitalist system without attempting to overthrow it. They also attack each other when one person does not see another’s personal problems as “the one true leftist perspective.”
A key factor is sometimes these criticisms are not coming from someone who is looking for solidarity, but supremacy. This is why people become defensive, because these accusations are not always launched with a cooperative perspective in mind, but a competitive mindset that is a result of western societal framing. Many of the examples cited can also be liberal perspectives quietly excusing capitalism. Basically saying "if it was only ‘x’ group that was removed from power, or put in charge, the current system would work.
im going to be real with you, you have the line of a section of the left that marginalized ppl eventually learn to detect so that we can stay far away, like being able to smell rotten eggs at 10 parts per billion or whatever
the idea of a person seeing themselves as a worker first-and-only (that is, of class reductionism) is something that makes the most sense to cishet white male etc workers. they have no other material interests, really, besides as workers and as consumers, so they’re focused on that narrow conversation. for them it seems frustrating and “postmodern” for people to advance their interests on different fronts besides the simon-pure marxian vision of two great classes pitted against each other. actually they’re doing what everyone is doing - representing their own interests - but they alone have this conviction that everyone else’s interests are lesser. they have the strongest possible white fragility / male fragility / cisheteronormative / etc reaction of fearing that the oppressed are seeking, as you put it, “not… solidarity, but supremecy” and that we have a “competitive mindset”
the strength of marxism is not in dogmatically subsuming minority interests to some ideal homogeneous collective for the sake of “solidarity,” but in being able to identify that our interests are connected by our common class oppression. that means that, for example, I will advance my interests as a woman, without one iota of compromise to you - not sorry - but I can work on common goals with leftists who want the same thing I do, i.e. an end to class society
my favorite marxism quote:
What is right for the working class, cannot be wrong for the women. Being oppressed, devoid of rights and, in many instances, disregarded, it is not only their right, but their duty to defend themselves and to adopt any method that appears good to them, so that they may win an independent position. […] Woman, in order to attain her aim more quickly, must look about for allies, and she naturally finds such allies in the proletarian movement. The class-conscious proletariat has long since commenced to storm the fortress of the state that is founded on class rule, which includes the rule of one sex over the other. - August Bebel
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I’d rather a cis white male see me as a comrade than acknowledge the black struggle
this approach fails even on its own terms of trying to achieve a common revolution for everyone. all of those other “individual oppressions” are key sites of class struggle! you can’t leave them out and mutually agree that everyone will act like the only thing that matters is worker identity, at least without completely hobbling your efforts.
A bunch of groups with a common goal that will betray each other the moment they think that others are antagonistic is called the Spanish Civil War.
it’s nice that you’re so trusting, but I’m not. you’re talking like they’re not the ones with a proven record of betraying. taibbi and most patsocs have already decided that publicly crucifying the trans is just going to have to be the price to be paid to gain popular support for their programs. us history is a nonstop parade of cases of labor militancy collapsing when its middle class support is bought off with concessions to split them away from labor. or black history my god, the number of times white socialists decided it was tactically expedient to keep blacks and immigrants out? this kind of thing is not all behind us. you have to be vigorous in militating for your own interests or else you’re just depending on whatever consideration you get ambiently from liberal society- which will not serve you well as material conditions continue to deteriorate.
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Merely mentioning the word bourgeois(ie) makes so many people in the first world cringe, including the ones who proclaim to be left. I don’t understand why it is so hard to admit your privileges, wild how decades of liberal propoganda even made basic descriptive words unappealing and cringeworthy.
“Eugh you are so stuck in time an unappealing to the common people”
I am both of those but not because I use the correct terminology
I think it’s because in America, anyone with a decent 9-5 job has money in the stock market through a 401k, is pursuing home ownership, and probably wants to start a business or has a business owner of some kind in the family (even if it’s sketchy grifting BS). The line for what counts as bourgeois is so skewed here, I think a lot of American workers aren’t sure which side of the line they’re on. Of course, this is all by design
Join a party. This is a message board.
Except that I’ve seen the same exact shit in irl orgs, pushing out marginalized comrades. Just because this is the internet, doesn’t mean you’re exempt from examining your privledge and holding solidarity with marginalized people by shutting the fuck up and listening.
Message boards have standards. This is a shitposting site.
It seems unhelpful to frame this as “minority do good thing, majority do bad thing” when it would be so easy to just say “chauvinists” or something for the second group, which 99% of the time will be the corresponding majority members but isn’t essentializing and has some resilience against Candace Owen types.
It seems unhelpful to frame this as “minority do good thing, majority do bad thing”
I don’t think anything is being framed that way here. It’s just written in casual language. I think we can recognize when a person from a marginalized group is a reactionary like Candace Owens.
The problem with just saying “chauvinists” is that no one on hexbear or in the DSA thinks the word applies to them. The point of the post is that all white people, all men, etc., are exposed to privilege brainworms from cradle to grave, and we’re not necessarily aware of the brainworms we have absorbed, so when someone criticizes us we should shut the fuck up and listen and reflect, because it’s not a far-fetched criticism. Getting defensive and shouting people down because we’re sure we’re not chauvinists is what’s actually divisive.
…I keep neurotically editing the wording of this comment because I got stuck in some kind of obsessive loop, I’m going for a walk.
Loops are rough, I can sort of see how this would be a hazard for that with all the meta language.
Personally I guess I just get irritated by things that are written like they are a PSA but need to rely on charitable interpretation to make sense. The problem with not saying chauvinists is that, if we see things in purely identitarian terms like the original post does at face value, then when we are confronted by situations where the roles are reversed (and yes, this is a minority of situations, but perhaps more common than one might think), like a white, male leftist arguing against the chauvinism of a Candace Owen type, the lines of thinking here short-circuit. Simple deference is fine for casual relations but it’s not nearly as useful in grand proclamations because, if we actually accepted the proclamation, then we’ve kneecapped ourselves in a way similar to “progressive” liberals observably have, that latter case being the main reason Owens types have a career to start with. We cannot look only at what the speaker is but also at what they are saying.
it’s not easy to write a tightly worded PSA about a sensitive topic with a lot of tricky nuances, and I think sometimes it’s more important to just get something posted promptly in the moment while the topic is getting attention in the community, and then let people hash things out in the comments, hopefully converging toward understanding through dialog. Also, I hope that on hexbear most of us are on each others’ wavelengths enough not to assume someone’s asking for “blind deference” to any group or person.
But yeah I agree it’s one of the big challenges in communication, that sometimes discourse moves faster than understanding. In the worst cases you get a spiral of compounding misunderstandings and personal slights until people hate each other lol, the gap widens faster than communication can bridge it. But imo that’s why it’s so important for people to be patient, read between the lines, and ask for clarification instead of lashing out defensively. Communication is like trying to force your brain through a straw.
And sure, while I agree that we should never offer anyone blind deference, we should offer a fair bit of deference to people from marginalized groups, because they can see things the privileged are often blind to. They are looking at privilege from the outside, and it’s always easier to understand something from the outside. And we should offer even more deference to leftists from marginalized groups, i.e., the people who voice complaints on hexbear dot net. A communist who’s been posting here for months and written a lot of great, thoughtful comments in this thread is especially unlikely to be asking for blind deference. Not saying it’s wrong to ask for clarification though, quite the opposite, as long as there’s patient dialog.
To be clear, I’m not accusing anyone here of holding any position such as demanding blind deference, just that taking these statements at face value has problems.
Admittedly, the website does have a problem with being radlib and there are some people who have demanded blind deference in the past [“it’s cool to objectify women if you’re a lesbian!” etc.], but I don’t think this user is one of them or that this particularly intersects with those grievances that I whine about.
the patriarchy do be hurting men too though
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“Patriarchy” is a funny way to say “Capitalism” so the concept can survive and that is just needs more women to be in positions of power to exploit it.
Sorry but that’s a bad and extremely reductive take. There is absolutely a unique factor of oppression towards non-cis-men that
a) evolved historically
b) reproduces itself in our current economic system, but
c) isn’t guaranteed to dissolve and could be perpetuated in a post-capitalist economic system and
d) could be eased even under capitalism and materially benefit those affectedIgnoring this factor of oppression results in a reductive analysis of the kind of “let’s overthrow capitalism and everything will be great”
Yes - the liberation of women, trans people of all genders, non-binary people etc. necessitates an end of capitalist structures - but that alone won’t solve the problem. So saying “patriarchy = capitalism” is reductive.
And of course men suffer from patriarchal structures too - but it’s qualitatively not the same as the explotation of their labour or the way non-cis men experience gender oppression.
This should also be expanded to include non-hetero men as well – there’s already enough literature on heteronormativity that I don’t feel obligated to go into too much detail (and it is also very late so I don’t want to), but it should be sufficient to say that heteronormativity and cisnormativity are major reinforcing factors for patriarchy, and that therefore homophobia and transphobia are inseparably linked to patriarchy. The oppressions experienced by cis gay men are certainly going to be different than those experienced by non-cis men, but there should still be a fair amount in common, and a large amount that cishet men do not experience.
thank u for deploying the downbear, I’m so sick of being told to shut up and get back in line until after the revolution
It’s “all struggles matter” and it sucks.
Fucking well put
there is no western left
Where’s anywhere anything left left?
not in semantics … for sure…
…Not the west? There are plenty of leftists in Africa, South America, and Asia.
Why do they call it the left??? When you of in the right wing of out hot left the wing??
Everyone engaged in practical work must investigate conditions at the lower levels. Such investigation is especially necessary for those who know theory but do not know the actual conditions, for otherwise they will not be able to link theory with practice. Although my assertion, “No investigation no right to speak”, has been ridiculed as “narrow empiricism”, to this day I do not regret having made it; far from regretting it, I still insist that without investigation there cannot possibly be any right to speak. There are many people who “the moment they alight from the official carriage” make a hullabaloo, spout opinions, criticize this and condemn that; but, in fact, ten out of ten of them will meet with failure. For such views or criticisms, which are not based on thorough investigation, are nothing but ignorant twaddle. Countless times our Party suffered at the hands of these “imperial envoys”, who rushed here, there and everywhere. Stalin rightly says “theory becomes purposeless if it is not connected with revolutionary practice”. And he rightly adds that “practice gropes in the dark if its path is not illumined by revolutionary theory”. Nobody should be labeled a “narrow empiricist” except the “practical man” who gropes in the dark and lacks perspective and foresight.
I may be misunderstanding this
quotation, but I think it aligns with your post. One who holds class/ethnic/racial/gender/cis/etc privilege and doesn’t have the empathy and curiosity to investigate how that privilege effects their material circumstances makes a poor communist.no more half measures walter
People really do need to learn when to shut up
I can’t believe we’re having this struggle session now involving 3 year old accounts?
How did they keep quiet this long and what made them lose this ability?
i know, im kinda wilding
earnestly waiting, i need to know what brainworms i have that will end with me being banned now
I’m pissed off, but unsurprised. I’ve been seeing this same shit throughout the western white left since I became a leftist.
Shush you’re never allowed to leave. I won’t let you.
what is this, a hotel in california?
I love that song. I can’t help it. Even with its contextual political baggage.
Huh, I had no idea, what’s the message of Hotel California?
To summarize, it was at the ideological front of the idea of the public mental hospital system being a bad thing (and yes in many ways it was) but that lead to the Reagan-era abolishment of pretty much the entire thing which drove so many people out of that system that many of them became permanently homeless and untreated of numerous mental illnesses… lingering on the streets for decades, some to the present day if they haven’t died already.
earnestly waiting, i need to know what brainworms i have that will end with me being banned now
If I had to guess (not for you specifically, but hexbear in general), it would be tone indicators. The last big struggle session that I can think of was whether we should use tone indicators to accomodate neurodivergent people. It actually makes sense to use them in an online forum like this, even for neurotypical people because nuance is lost when one is just reading text straight up. However, I saw a lot of pushback on this sort of thing from users that would normally be all about the “hexbear party line” (so to speak) of things like vegan solidarity, trans solidarity and respecting pronouns, etc. And it’s the same line of argumentation that people who were against meat content warnings were using (“what’s the big deal?” etc.). So yeah perhaps that’s the next frontier.
i already have to badger people to do spoiler tags and nsfw tags properly for trauma related content, that is gonna take ages to catch on
i do usually use emojis as a tone indicator a lot of times though 🤔 thats probably not very reliable for a lot of neurodivergent people but maybe some emojis could be made to ease adoption, would have to inform people on hover texts
i already have to badger people to do spoiler tags and nsfw tags properly for trauma related content, that is gonna take ages to catch on
You’ve (correctly) told me to add spoiler tags and NSFW tags on my own posts, and while inconvenient at first, I would not want it any other way because that’s better for other people.
I think it boiled down to some people being mildly inconvenienced and being asked to modify their behavior for the sake of other people.
Fair-weather comrades until that moment.
A lot of these people have been saying the same things for years, if they weren’t being transphobic or making jokes about pumpkin spice lattes the mods just let them be and so did the user base
