One of the differences between the KMT and the DPP is that the former wants China’s capital to be in Taipei where as the latter would like it to be in Washington and failing that, now apparently, Tokyo.

https://redsails.org/concessions/

Personally not against a welfare system, though not one susbidised by the superexploitation of the Global South.

As a rule of thumb, I’ll judge revolutionary potential by the degree that they will materially benefit from the end of Western Imperialism. I hope there are large enough groups of proleteriat and lumpenproleteriat in the west that fit this definition though I have not seen a deep dive study into this, yet.

Don’t know what your other beefs are about, I’ll leave that with the rest of the commenters.

Even major and well-known analysts, observing a decrease in the number of launches, conclude that Iran is supposedly running out of missiles.

The west has spread positivism to the level of a plague.

(Thank you so much rainpizza for the updates here on lemmygrad)

Whether understood or not, it is because of the implications of flying any western nation flag has a similar liability. Israel’s crimes are the west’s crimes and that is too close a comfort for most westerners ie functionally westerner = zionist (the western project is poisoned from the roots up with the only hope is the dialectics of it becoming the opposite of the montrosity it now is, negating itself in the process. To convey this in a way a westerner understands: if a nazi has a chance to redeems himself then it at least starts by being no longer a nazi.)

Ngl the temptation is great (Rahman, reverse racism):

https://youtube.com/watch?v=dw_mRaIHb-M

Redacted

^This.

If you don’t make the case then you don’t have a case and everything you said will then be apolgism for US Veteran support without a scientific basis.

Getting indignated on the completely human response to these war criminals without making the materialist case we should supercede it is just moralism by another name. There is no neutrality about good or evil, or lack of morals or not; we determine all these things by praxis - we are not above it all.

You’re asking for a supposed scientific neutrality to analysis where none such exists. And you can’t even give the case why all this supposed effort is even worth it.

This stuff is obvious even without marxism. It is only confounding because of the class position as a westerner.

You’ve missed the point. The post is not for or against judging peoples morality. It is about understanding that morality is learned. It is a product of material conditions. So having superior morality does not make an Ubermench. Just like how a person who has good education or health isn’t superior to someone who is uneducated or has health issues.

Labor aristocrats aren’t inferior to colonized peoples just because they get crumbs from imperialism. People are people. We all have blind spots and shortcomings but if we decide that some of faults are so bad we can deny there is a human underneath that is idealism not materialism. I’m not saying we should overlook faulty morality but we need to analyze it through a materialist lens.

What in all of that allows to determine revolutionary potential? The supposed subjective inferiority/superiority inferred is besides the point; I am saying all that is secondary to material conditions - our subjective value judgement may be consequence of our relationships with all this but it is not the primary reason to determine anybody revolutionary potential from a marxist perspective.

Put it bluntly, what is the material analysis for the revolutionary potential for US Veterans? What relation to property have you concluded to make the case?

what if dollar hegemony goes away?

There will be less pontification regarding the moralism of moralism in US Veteran apologism.

Haha and pretty much agree with the sentiment!

Nietzschean leftists here are extremely stupid. Everyone “moralizes” and Christianity didn’t invent morals or ethics you fucking goofs.

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

To clarify:

• idealism here = battle of ideas to win folks over rather than understand the material conditions that form their (and our) ideas. We have to make the case our project is more beneficial than what imperialism provides; for a lot of the imperial core folks it will not be
• ahistorical = not historical materialism
• the rest: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/10992751/7897527

Moralism comes from material conditions.

Arguing for anti-moralism is not the same as an argument whether or not to support these western veterans from a marxist perspective.

How does one understand the revolutionary potential of a given class? By doing class analysis; understanding the relation to property. The primary global contradiction is imperialism and the US is the imperial core. Imperialism is class relationship of protecting and gaining private property against Global South proleteriat.

Let’s consider it from a different perspective. Let’s imagine there was no military industrial complex in the US as we know it now ie all state owned. Would that army’s relationship as a whole to imperialism change? Ie what is the purpose of the army? It is there to help subsidise the lives of the USAmerican proleteriat + bourgoisie + petite-bourgoisie through imperialist extraction; it is this relationship that is centre of whether veterans have revolutionary potential or not, it is to consider what is their role is in these material conditions, how they benefit from it and any moralism has a whole comes secondary to this.

In this context for the imperial core bourgoisie proleteriat you have to consider how and whether you are going to make the case that your project in the short term will offer them better material condtions than one provided by imperialism (challenging to put it mildly).

That is how you step away from idealism and towards dialectical materialism and a deeper class analysis. The PSL have not done so because their material conditions as bourgoisie proleteriat has led them to the ideas they have now.

Ironically your anti-moralism in this context is moralism (crude analogy: “colour blindness” in a response to racism), which is partly why I am not saying your argument is bad because of moralism; rather I am leaning into it but suggesting that moralism should be guided by the science instead.

Do what needs to be done so the socialist project of Cuba survives and let the virtual signaling keyboard “anti-imperialists” be satisfied by their naval gazing.

There isn’t an easy way to say this that will not sound like an attack, so let’s just rip the band aid off.

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

Nah, fuck PSL. (Btw most of your post was moralism; arguing for or against how liable a person is for their actions is not what allows us to decide revolutionary potential of any given class)

Let’s take an example.

You’re in Germany in the early-mid 20th century and you would like to take down the Nazi government and the way we are going to go about this is we are going to do this to use a Nazi veteran who is sorry about the war crimes he was involved in. The idea is by appealing to Nazi society who we think will be persuaded to ultimately take down Nazi governance by being convinced by the rhetoric of this Nazi soldier who we hope they consider an authorative voice given that (1) he’s a nazi (2) he’s a soldier.

Has the above idealism worked ever in history or you know, did we need to raise a massive advanced bolshevik army to defeat the nazis? Would you understand why the above would be considered idealism and ahistorical?

Now consider this: USAmerican soldiers, by every reasonably considerable metric, are significantly worse than Nazis. Heck, if we are putting up numbers liberals have killed way more than fascists - fascism is inherenrly shortlived and unstable needing non-communists to collaborate with communists to take them down, where as liberals can continue with killing for longer as they create more stablity domestically and with the comprador classes abroad.

The moralism justified in using veterans in the US (an imperial supercore of which global hegemony tilts towards till late, ie the consolidation of all sub imperialisms) can be juxtaposed by the moralism a marxist might then take against the US soldier; the reality of the material conditons of what produces veterans and the material conditions of using veterans in a veteran-honoring-society.

(Moralism and identarianism is part of the human condition, marxism is what hones our lance and point it in the right direction. We may de-emphasise the moralism is in marxism so that the moralism of the marxist can be guided by the science and serve towards the dictatorship of the proleteriat: https://redsails.org/on-identitarianism-a-defense-of-a-strawman/ )

A lot of the most famous marxists betrayed the relative class positions and aspirations but the revolutionary potential is towards the science of wielding marxism - the effort in using veterans as a class would be more useful in actually finding revolutionary classes - in the US this may involve the lumpenproleteriat and migrant populations where the downfall of US imperialism and the dissolution of the US project is in their material interests.

(If you want to convert veterans to marxists so they form a large enough group to take down the fascist military from within, well then that’s an underground movement and you’re not advertising veteran support because the above is essentially anti-veteran. And even then actually successful coups in the direction of socialism (ie not another bourgoisie take over) came from the masses from which some veterans fell in line - it was not tailism)

He’s just more honest about doing away the bourgoisie theater of electoralism and lay bare more nakedly the fascism underpinning the West.

Excellent write up (starred/saved) and thanks for sharing (and the effort that went into this)!

Why aren’t you living up to the idealised sentimentalised revolutionary in my head while you have a gun to yours? Oh how dare you question how I am materially supporting and showing solidarity to Venezuela!

It’s going to be an uphill battle to convince westerners who are already tilted on the axis of benefiting from imperialism to then disavow a patriarchal society of the imperial cores that provides those benefits.

Let’s look at some counter examples of relatively better functional transgender rights than a lot of the west:

• India (socially conservative patriachal society (ies), reactionary stance in aligning with Western imperialism and neocolonialism, some of the worst human rights records against folks who arent cis-men)
• Iran (could be argued a socially conservative society*, progressive stance against imperialism. *= massive caveat when you look at the actual high percentage for example in STEM and acadaemia of women in Iran)
• Cuba (socialist society with significant Catholic population, under brutal sanctions/hybrid warfare by the west; arguably some of the best transgender rights in the world)

I used the above three examples because of their significant differences but also a glaring similarity - none of them share the benefits from being a westerner.

Transgender emanicpation is not an “add-on” that the liberal framework of intersectionalism would like us to believe; it is intrinsic to marxism-leninsim, beating capital and fighting Western imperialism. The patriarchy exists functionally to exploit those who are not a stright cis man harder, and it is upheld by various westerners (women, folks of colour etc) who get a piece of that imperialist pie as a reward. It is why, for example, a bunch of the early British suffragettes readily joined the British Union of Fascists and why “feminist” JK Rowling is not only a rabid transphobe but also deeply racist - the two go hand in hand.

It is so bad that there is a whole discussion in Marxism to let go of feminism as a term because it does not go far enough for women/queer/trans rights, and carries too much imperialist baggage with it.

The ACP are not anything new - they have been functionally what western workers have always been as a class - the concession they got for the welfare state is the continued exploitation of the other:

https://redsails.org/concessions/

It is why strasserites were a thing and why nazis shot them once they killed off and kicked out all the “undesirables”.

What are the strategic consequences of decisively rejecting the tripartite social theory advanced by Orwell, and adopting Marx’s all-encompassing one instead? The basic call to action looks something like this:

Stop accusing the masses of being “brainwashed.” Stop treating them as cattle, stop attempting to rouse them into action by scolding them with exposure to “unpleasant truths.”

Accept instead that they have been avoiding those truths for a reason. You were able to break through the propaganda barrier, and so could they if they really wanted to. Many of these people see you as the fool, and in many cases not without reason.

Understanding people as intelligent beings, craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.

If you cannot make this case, then forget about convincing the person in question. Focus instead on finding other people to whom such a case can be made. This will lead you directly to class analysis.

https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/

The unfortunate truth is a lot of western “marxists” and leftists aren’t all that left. They engage in proudhonism (go look up some proudhon quotes, say they are from marx and let’s see how many likes you will get) and are functionally left-liberals. They buy into industrial vs finance capital (see how popular Hudson is and important reminder that Nazis did the same), not understand how deeply the relation of capital holds (see how popular MMT is), hold on to reactionary sentiments (see how popular anti-AI is), defend socdem apologism (Mamdanis, DSA, Greens etc), refuse to study the science of what makes a group revolutionary (non-material defense of USAmerican veterans - they come from poor backgrounds, they were fooled into it, some of them regret what happened and are “anti-war”, sentimentalise the quality of life of veterans who aren’t cared for, eg PSL) etc etc

Again there’s a discussion about even abandoning the whole left-right spectrum given 99% of western left is functionally anti-marxism leninism, and we understand left deviation within ML itself is not “less wrong” than right deviation [ie ML is a science and therefore it should be ML vs (right + left)]. Tbh I am not there (yet?).

Best of luck

https://redsails.org/the-problem-of-recognition-in-transitional-states/

The resilience and restraint of Iran really is commendable. When you look at the sizes of impact craters and blast radii, they are relatively small for the speeds of the missiles used which means they have been using relatively small payloads so far (I realise they have changed that criteria recently to increase this as it looks like they will be targetting larger or more robust structurea) ie minimising collateral damage and aiming for accuracy.

An anathema to western style warfare.

If you think fascists are only now just taking over the west - the west that is involved in brutal mass murder, torture, imprisonment and mass rape all over the global south and within its own borders and ongoing for centuries - then it is because you have been privileged enough not to to feel its barbarism till now.

It is your fantasy that is being popped. What you want is to go back to how it was were you weren’t as affected as much. You’re giving the impression of larping solidarity because you’ve presumably felt a fraction of that pain.

The white conservatives aren’t friends of the Negro either, but they at least don’t try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the “smiling” fox. - Malcolm X

(pro tip: if someone has not told you to piss off already in response to the awful shit you said, and then signposted reading resources, and especially pointed to the Global South as a resource to learn from them, then chances are they from the Global South.

Don’t be a fucking fool and look down on what’s valuable because of western hubris.

Educate yourself. Otherwise you ain’t no friend; the guy with the SS tattoo is just more honest.

Marxism is a science and you should give yourself the decency as a human being to learn it; it is the only thing to defeat fascists and if you won’t learn it then you are their aid - willing or unwilling. Quackery does not stop the growth of malignancy, only the scientific application of chemotherapy has a fighting chance.)