Comradeship // Freechat

Meant to respond to this, but had kinda put it aside, as it's a lot of to go through if I were to break it down bit by bit. Overall, I get the impression we mostly agree, but maybe have some disagreement over the value of the differentiation between imperial core and global south radical potential.

On the one hand, I think it'd be a very fair criticism to point to the fact that the imperial core has never had a communist vanguard revolution (if we are considering imperial core regions to be predominantly "white" ones). And like I said in my reply to a different post of yours in another thread today, I think that racialized distinction matters, considering how powerful white supremacy is and how it developed in a way that props up the "civil/savage" colonial narrative. Certainly the labor aristocracy view is one way of helping to explain why the imperial core keeps failing to produce a prole revolution.

On the other hand, when was the last time any part of the world had a communist vanguard revolution? The Sahel might be the closest in recent history, though I'm unsure how close they are to socialist practice vs. anti-imperialist sovereignty. It's very commendable what they're doing either way, but anyway, the reason I'm putting the question this way, is to expand it beyond the imperial core to what is halting prole revolutions from having traction more generally. The number of states in the world we'd call "AES" are few, but so too are the number of states we'd call "imperial core" (as far as I'm aware, anyway). So what is keeping so much of the world trapped in this state of capitalist hegemony? The obvious answer is imperialism and the consequences of post-WWII US hegemony, along with the virulent and violent anti-communist campaigns that followed. We can further point to the fall of the USSR and the more defensive, internally-focused position that socialist China took in order to become the socialist fortress that it is today.

The end result is that a lot of communists were imprisoned or murdered, that great effort was made to poison the well against communism and socialism the world over, and that even "reformist" working class movements took a hit from all the imperial crackdown.

Now as you point out, things are these days moving in an overall positive direction relative to that. Anti-imperialism is growing stronger and China is showing up as the lynchpin of a new multipolar world order. But a lot of damage has been done by the post-WWII state of things, in both base and superstructure.

For an imperialized/colonized country, the struggle may be as "simple" (not to be confused with "easy") as national sovereignty, which doesn't have to be socialist in order for it to have value in opposing imperialism. In the current world order, this seems to be an easier sell than building a disciplined communist vanguard. Imperial core "white" peoples have a problem in that if they go for nationalism, they will tend to be reinforcing imperialism, rather than resisting it. Perhaps more so in settler states like the US, where nationalism is associated with being a colonizer and so it is not moving forward at all. This is an aspect to it that has little to do with "imperial spoils" directly and more to do with the psychology of rallying around a cause and being motivated to fight. What pride can you have in the possession of a land that isn't yours? What way of life are you fighting for, if the only cultural way of life you ever knew was colonialism?

So the way I see it, in the context of settler states, it's not only a matter of the dynamic of production and labor, but also a matter of white supremacy, and also a matter of trying to find something meaningful to fight for in the first place that is not reproducing the horrors of colonialism and imperialism. The most capable means of doing this is marxism-leninism coupled with anti-imperialism, but these can also be regions where the repression of communist (or even minor labor movements) is some of the most thoroughly repressive; not necessarily the most violent, but where the control is the most direct and immediate. Unlike an imperialized country, a Yankee cannot sidestep this vilification and repression of communism problem for the time being by being nationalistic. So it seems to me that what we end up with is a lot of anti but very little pro and this, among other reasons, makes it all the harder to rally people.

I think of what was once said about General Qasem Soleimani being murdered by the imperialists. I don't remember the exact quote, but it went something like: "Who would we attack in retaliation that's equivalent to him? Spongebob Squarepants?" The idea being that the west doesn't really have revered figures like that to rally around. At least, not living ones.

Anyway, I'm spacing out a bit on tying this all together, but the general point is that there is, as far as I can tell, numerous factors that go into it and that the Global South is not immune to sharing some of the same problems, due to the reach and violence of imperialism in post-WWII.