It seems most cross tendency engagement devolves in to fights between leftcoms/anarchists vs AES supporters or “Dengists” vs Maoists. Anyone can point at each other and say “they started it” and avoid responsibilities. We agree on 90% of stuff but Anarchists decide to randomly call us tankies and we feel the need to defend ourselves or else look like we lost without an argument. Likewise we make memes about Anarkiddies and write texts denouncing them and they feel the same. Among scientific socialists we see China as an ally and an example to learn from while Maoists want to call out “revisionism.” There seems to be a contradiction between the history of different socialist experiments and disagreements not really mattering to our own conditions and those experiments also being vital learning experiences for us.
It’s strange to think about how we pretty much agree with Patsocs on more than almost any other tendency yet they are almost useless because they don’t understand the basic dialectical method and why have our positions beyond aesthetics and thus cannot understand the basic material conditions of this country.
We can keep trying to bring more people into our own sects and hope they do work for our own type of socialism irl, but if we’re so divided how can this happen. Of course we should all just log off and do things irl, but then some will fall into the trap of either larping or just helping their own friends without the wider goal of revolution.
We all need to remember that the feds let us speak because we spend all our time bickering. How can we unify as a revolutionary left? There are projects irl for trying to find unity as scientific socialists like ChunkaLuta, but it would be nice to be able to do the same online. In a way I’m just wishing everyone could just listen to revleft and everything could work out, but what can Lemmygrad and hexbear do for this vision?
I understand this and I’m not trying to appeal to Gonzalists, but how do we find more unity with principled MZT and other relatively principled non-ML tendencies? Not everyone’s going to think China’s socialist and they don’t need to. Is this not more “I’m the most pure leftist unlike you ultras and revisionists?”
All of the principled Marxists are already working with us, though mostly IRL.
Many people here on both LG and HexBear don’t identify their ideology with Lenin’s theories, but they’re already here civilly engaging with us. There is already unity between us, for as far as matters.
What matters more, imo, is educating new leftists on the ideology groups that seek to destabilize the left so they don’t fall into their traps.
So basically we just need to get more non-terminally online people to work with us. Get terminally online people to actually do the work. And get more unity and general strategy among principled real organizations.
more or less yeah, at least in my view.
other views on the topic are valid as hell, but the way I see it the people who’re doing the most to harm the left aren’t people who actually do anything progressive (in terms of progressing movements). Those people are also, without fail, the ones who are the most ready to fight against our unity. Those who want to see a brighter future, and have put in the work to understand theory and the way propaganda works, are already working with us. So it’s less about changing the minds of those already against us, and more about keeping those groups from talking over us.
Sure, we try to out propagandize other tendencies and deviations. I notice another contradiction, though. If we are trying to draw those who aren’t already against us into our ranks then many of those people will be “apolitical” or only mildly interested, considering many with a great interest in politics (in the west) have dived into anti-communist lore. The most politically active may be already against us while those intactive may not “activate.” I guess we shouldn’t be arguing with the most committed online anticoms at the least. Maybe the best target is disaffected liberals irl.