/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

The issue with the diagram isn't so much the concentric construction, it's the 'Great Leadership' or 'Jefetura' being the center-point and not, as the CPP and CPI(Maoist), learned "collective leadership".
It unveils that the Gonzaloists are in fact another sect of dogmatists who were unable to critically analyze where the PCP-SL went wrong.
In short you're too lazy for success (scientific socialism), instead opting for an exciting little social club (adventurism). It is easily identified as left-revisionism by communists who aren't just LARPing. You're just as much of a problem as right-revisionists.

>>2651372
I've come to realize recently that I don't get the point of the united front or "movement" as a necessary part of communist work. There are three forms this takes: 1) alliances with and/or entryism in liberal/non-communist orgs in order to enhance communist force as a coalition and to have a larger pool to recruit from 2) creating a constellation of front groups that do things like hold signs that say "no to imperialist aggression!" in order to give "the masses" "political education" through mobilizing them to ends we know are futile 3) work in unions and tenants unions

Why is this actually necessary? The "movement" is always reform oriented. Because of this, structurally the organizations are built to do reform, and are not capable of being "led" (somehow) to revolutionary ends by a communist party that gains their trust and radicalizes them or whatever. And really they don't hold much power. Political power grows from the barrel of a gun, not from your ability to strike. At least in countries where the working class movements are all very weak already, I think they should just be abandoned in favor of building a party whose goal is creating (through mass line and then deep study of the social mechanics that lead to the issue) policy and enforcing policy (via an armed organ). This is the fundamental role of a party. Yet EVERY SINGLE PARTY, whether ML or Trot or Maoist says we just need to grow the unions first then proceed from there. Why? They're gone because they don't work anymore. What will work is guns. If we build it they will come. We should be channeling people into the real work of building power, which is building an alternative and challenge to bourgeois state power. To challenge state power we need our own policy, our own enforcement, and our own ideological apparatus to manufacture consent for our legitimacy over theirs and for our policy over theirs. Insofar as that third circle is filled, it should say "all other administrative functions of the embryonic proletarian state". We don't need to internalize an exterior of reformist or pure optics struggles. We need study groups that produce reports on given issues, we need to enact mass line, we need an armed body that trains regularly in all things needed for actual combat, we need to systematically promote our analyses and policy with standardized media and talking points, and everything else implied… e.g. security precautions, canvassing, bribing defectors of the bourgeoisie, inciting members of the working class to break with bourgeois media and entertainment and spend time other ways, etc.

This gives AMPLE real activity that needs to be done that would all go towards building real power. Why is every single communist group hung up on "mass work" that's getting people to show up to a banner holding and unionizing (and tenant unionizing)? There's more than enough real work to do and this stresses me the fuck out

>>2651372
holy shit lmao these graphs are so fucking retarded WTF

>>2654590
The point of engaging in mass work is to reach the working class where they actually exist and to exploit existing contradictions within the masses to set large groups of people on a course of conflict against the ruling class, based on their own premises. The idea being that actual real world struggle for common material interest will eventually radicalise said masses in the direction of mass socialist revolution. While many communist parties have fallen into various right wing deviations in regards to their supposed "mass work", rejecting it entirely in favour of armed struggle + study circles is an ultra-leftist deviation.

Do maoists not realize having this type of organizational structure means that they will run out of party cadres soon since they will all die in the trenches

>>2651372
hey

>great leadership
hahahahahahahahahhahahahahahhaha

>>2658710
I suspect this graph is meant to indicate that party cadres are suppoed to be placed in command positions within the armed forces, rather than being thrown into various front line positions

maoism and kautskyism are retarded, more news at 11

>>2651372
Based Analysis Comrade S poster, the Maoist principle that “The Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party” has been proven correct by the Dialectical Materialist reality that almost every Communist Party that refused to make the Military a Party organ was overthrown (The Sole exception is Cuba, and they sadly seem like they could get taken out soon by the U$ Imperialists), while every Communist Party that made the Military a Party organ remained in power, though they all turned Revisionist to varying degrees, while the only Communist Parties that are waging Revolution in the 21st Century are the CPI (Maoist), CPP-NPA-NDF, TKP/ML, and the Shining Path, all of which are Militarized Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Parties waging Maoist PPWs in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Peru, respectively, ✊😜🇨🇳🇰🇵🇨🇺🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🚀☢️!

>>2651432
“Great Leadership” and “Collective Leadership” are not mutually exclusive, as all “Great Leadership” must be “Collective” and all “Collective Leadership” must be “Great”, and the Dialectical Materialist reality is that Gonzalo would have been the President of the People’s Republic of Peru (that would eventually become part of a Hispano-American SFSR of the future Global USSR) right now if he only did not make the tragic mistake of staying in a Urban “Safehouse” and if one of his associates did not sell him out to the CIA, and even with this temporary setback the Shining Path is still waging Maoist PPW in Peru and their are many News reports indicating that the Shining Path is on the verge of a major comeback, so it is not accurate to blame Gonzalo’s capture and the Shining Path’s resultant temporary setback on the Immortal Science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the Highest Stage of Marxism, ✊😜🇨🇳🇰🇵🇨🇺🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🚀☢️!

>>2658813
Khrushchevite/Dengist Social Fascist/Social Imperialist Capitalist Roader Revisionist Marcyite Campists like yourself are Retarded and must reject Infantile Revisionist Retardation and embrace the Immortal Science of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, the Highest Stage of Marxism, rooted in the Immortal Thought of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao, and currently being practiced by the CPI (Maoist), CPP-NPA-NDF, TKP/ML, and the Shining Path, in their ongoing Maoist PPWs in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Peru, respectively, due to the fact that Maoist PPW is the only proven Scientific method to have a successful Communist Revolution that establishes a Dictatorship of the Proletariat (One-Party Marxist-Leninist-Maoist State) in the Socialist Mode of Production (Centrally Planned Socialist Economy), with Maoist PPW currently viable in the Material Conditions of the Periphery/Semi-Periphery, as proven by the ongoing Maoist PPWs in India, the Philippines, Turkey, and Peru, while in the Imperial Core, Maoist PPW wont be viable in the Material Conditions until World War III breaks out and/or Liberal Bourgeois Democracy is permanently suspended, with these two events being related and probably happening around the same time, when the inevitable World War III between the U$ and China escalates into a Global Nuclear War that will destroy the entire Global Capitalist-Imperialist System, thus allowing for a World Maoist PPW to create a Global USSR (All of the SSRs and SFSRs of the future Global USSR are shown in the Map I posted) that would place the Workers and Oppressed Nations of the World on the Shining Path to Communism, ✊😜🇨🇳🇰🇵🇨🇺🇵🇸🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🚀☢️!

>>2658703
I'll accept that my thinking might be a left deviation since it goes against what every single communist party in this country is doing currently, but I'm honestly not convinced still.
>reach the working class where they actually exist
Many people are radical on fundamental political issues but aren't being organized in a way that makes change. Focusing on economic issues over political issues (e.g. justice system & abolition) is failing to meet people where they're at by falling behind them. And when we create or bolster front groups that do essentially pressure campaigns at best or minor publicity stunts at worst (i say minor because you reach so few people holding signs somewhere compared to something like systematic education via socialist media) imo we demoralize the people who want to do something and who are looking for proper leadership. Everyone instinctively or explicitly knows that optics and pressure campaigns are what liberals do. We shouldn't be emulating them, we should be making ourselves a distinct alternative in a time when people are disillusioned with liberal leadership.
>exploit existing contradictions within the masses
In the imperial core this issue is not economic misery for the most part, but larger issues that are tied up with policy. Most people make okay money, but the cost of it is high working hours, poor medical care, etc. A lot of the animosity isn't towards the modern workplace, which has worker protections and is not apparent as the immediate cause of our poverty, but at landlords for absurdly raising rent, or grocery stores for price gouging, etc. Even though things could be fixed with wage increases this isn't seen as the primary issue, and for good reason since it's fundamentally not. We're at a stage where huge union movements stand behind us in history and they succeeded in scaring the capitalists into granting many concessions that increased the quality of life for the average worker. And where there is the most misery is where the workers' existence is extremely political - immigrant labor and the prison system (which includes poverty traps even after release). We suffer from a society that is designed to benefit psychopathic murderers and child rapists, while the average worker doesn't live in abject misery due to imperialism and past concessions. The issues are more social than economic so I don't see how economic combination is the answer. I know that the leninist catechism is that we have to organize workers so that they get a taste of rebelling and gain some political education that way, and through the failure or repression they face, but I don't see any way that this mechanically leads towards communist ends. What I mean is that historically, union failures demoralize the movement rather than spur radicalism. Radicalism is grown through persistent education. So at best we have voluntarism, the idea that our mass movement work is a zone for us to find relatively advanced workers and attempt to educate them and recruit them to the communist cause. We don't get communism by every single person being convinced of communism, but by communist leadership prevailing. There is no way to beat out capitalist mandatory education, the capitalist press, and the lack of practical experience with a socialist economy. Unless you disagree and thing voluntarism as a pejorative is incorrect, the movement building aspect of communist work doesn't seem to add any value to the goal of communist leadership and the defeat of the state. (unless you believe in a general strike taking down the state - which again, doesn't seem historically to be how it goes. Only annihilating the capitalist's armed forces will give us territorial control, and that takes more than a strike, and a strike doesn't prepare us for that kind of thing one bit)
>set large groups of people on a course of conflict
Typically it seems to only mobilize small groups, but I guess the aim is eventually large groups. Still this is more aspirational than reality.
>The idea being that actual real world struggle for common material interest will eventually radicalise said masses in the direction of mass socialist revolution
If this is true and this is the only way to do it, revolution will never come the US. For all I know it could be true, but I hope it's not because this society is so beyond fucked up that it needs to go immediately. The height of the socialist movement in this country happened around the end of extreme labor militancy, which was caused by conditions of extreme misery. Women working 80 hour weeks, children working 60, mass workplace deaths, massacres of striking workers, etc. All this was able to strongly grow the socialist movement yet it still wasn't enough. How long will it take for the US to fall to such conditions again? Or will it ever? Global warming will fuck our shit up before we get a militant labor movement to spur a socialist movement strong enough to win.

Also my proposition isn't armed struggle + study circles, it's armed forces (not necessarily in a state of constant struggle) + study circles (not in the traditional way of having comrades read the ML classics as cadre development, but in studying the issues our society faces in order to produce a definitive report on the subject, which is to inform policy, which is both an act of cadre education and an act of advancing the party's understanding as a whole and thus its ability to represent the working class) + media work + policy and judgements (i.e. proletarian justice, in whatever ways we can claiming our authority to carry out our own law, before and during actual armed struggle for territory)

My understanding is that the fundamental issues today aren't economic, they're political. So the response should be political combination. That means the creation and enforcement of policy. Which means armed struggle and study groups, as well as a struggle against bourgeois media with our own to build consensus around policy. What's wrong with this? I think it's only definitively ultra-leftist if I were to say that we could immediately wage armed struggle without a period of strategic defensive where we build up to the level of unity of the population behind us and strength of the armed forces we need, or if I said that the cadre and the armed forces would be one and the same and the goal is just to grow a conspiracy of armed communists. Right now lots of people are talking about taking up arms and there's no one serious to organize that into something productive. If the goal is to overthrow and become state power, why is the method not to grow state power from smaller to larger? Why is it first to funnel workers towards a dead end so that they get a taste (either of rebellion or failure depending on who you ask) first? We could be funneling them directly into hitting a beat distributing pamphlets, or training with weapons, or educating themselves and all of us as part of a study circle, and so on. These are all productive and don't require a high political level, just activist desire. This plus a system of logistics, or mutual aid, in order to help comrades and supporters have the free time, money, and energy they need (or housing, etc.) and we have all the building blocks of an insurgency. Why aren't we simply building power like this immediately? I know the answer for many parties is right deviation, but for maoists who identify the need for armed struggle it makes no sense to me that they still say first everything starts with unions, or tenants unions, or nondescript mass work which I assume means either of the above plus banner holding.

The bolsheviks held study circles for advanced factory workers, directly educating them in socialism instead of waiting for union struggle to gradually/magically do it. They also had a network of supporters who would house their professional revolutionaries. They also grew an armed force. I think my understanding is more in line with the actual practice of communists historically, while everyone else is relying on WITBD as the holy text. I don't hold any parties in disdain though, I think that the history has been so obscured, probably on purpose. Sorry for writing you a book in response.

>>2651372
I just cant get over the fact that roughly 4% of population is needed for modern mechanized agriculture. Peasant communism is retarded outside underdeveloped feodal societies.

>>2660628
What if I told you that the squeezing out of labor from the agricultural sector is part of a multi-decades long bourgeois scheme to drive up the cost of food? And the constant and insistent propaganda against rural farmers and demonization of agricultural labor, coupled with an emphasis on pursuing higher education via the promise of a better life, went hand in hand with that?

>>2658734
I am beyond tired of revisionist retards proclaiming fascism as what I would loosley term as "populist class collaborationist deformed socialism". Fascism was an elitist project from the outset. Before ᴉuᴉlossnW even took power, his blackshirts were beating up and killing Italian workers for demanding wage increases and going on strike against the capitalists. You cannot seriously claim with a straight face that the fascists openly advocated for a more prosperous society. Every time in every country, whether it be Germany, Italy, Spain, Chile, etc. the initial fascist movements always started out cracking down on proles organizing for better working and living conditions. This is why it was so easy for the traditional right wing and bourgeois parties to make common cause with them, and to later on accept their rule. To claim otherwise is to wholly capitulate to the meta-narratives of the new "online fascists", none of whom have read history books, but all of whom proclaim that somehow those societies were golden ages for the common man. It is a deception that communists should take great joy in exposing and rooting out, but we have many idiots on this board (including CPUSAnon) who have repeatedly tried to echo those talking points. I will note that despite everyone's hatred of Haz and the ACP on this board, even Haz, a supposed "fascist", proclaimed a strict delineation and divide between fascist and socialist societies, and has even previously argued against pro-fascist figures who were arguing that fascism somehow helped the workers. Somehow, something that is even obvious to ACP retards becomes confusing to many people on this board.

>>2660630
>producing more with less makes food more expensive
I hope youre not serious.

>>2660642
that's obviously not what he meant,but that is also true,there is a point where food becomes so inexpensive that storing it is more expensive than producing,so the only thing that happens is cutting cost and drastically reducing investement in the sector,raising the prices back up (since food is a commodity that is mandatory to be consumed)

>>2654590
On the three things you mention at the beginning, I'm not convinced by your argument for their uselessness. Not in the sense that they are particularly useful at the present stage, but because a communist movement needs a mass organizational base. It's hard for me to imagine how to cultivate one on a strictly Leninist platform like what you're proposing. Successful socialist movements of the past always had some sort of mass social structure they were in part or in whole responsible for, which regular people could participate in without the explicit aim of overthrowing capitalism in the Marxist sense before they reached maturity. The Bolsheviks had decades of the Russian peasant and worker's movements behind them and military defections on top of that too, the CNT was a massive syndicate, CPC had popularity among the peasantry thanks to their land reform programme, etc. Slightly less related but I don't see any professional army turning on its government in favor of communists as long as conscription is not enacted. You also have to factor in, for the lack of a better term, material conditions. Workers are made much less powerful by how replaceable they are on the global labour market compared to the 19th and 20th centuries. Maybe the multipolaritybros were right and the winning move really is to wait until the empires bleed each other out and shut off from other markets enough that they cannot pay the army and their laborers become valuable again.

>>2660559
Interesting post. Deserves it's own thread.

>>2660631
Good post

>>2660628
>>2660630
>>2660642
>>2660645
>that's obviously not what he meant,
different anon here, I also thought he meant that so you're going to have to clarify for both of us what the "obvious" meaning you got out of it was
>but that is also true,there is a point where food becomes so inexpensive that storing it is more expensive than producing
If food were instantly given to those who need it, so much less of it would need to be stored. But we produce for profit, not for use, and so facilities are required for hoarding commodities, so that they can be held back from consumption until someone with enough money expresses demand.
>so the only thing that happens is cutting cost and drastically reducing investement in the sector,raising the prices back up (since food is a commodity that is mandatory to be consumed)
interestingly, things which require long term storage, for fermentation, like aged cheese or wine, actually get more expensive the longer you store them, because the cost of the means of production used to store them, and the labor required to monitor their temperature, etc., go into the final product.

>>2660559
makes sense to me

>>2660655
I think you might be right, that all we can do is wait. But on your point about mass organizations, I just want to point out that these are all reform organizations. The argument that's being made then is that we need to get people rallied behind massive reform campaigns first because they won't accept the need for overthrow until then. My counter argument is: why not organize them into a reform campaign through voting, and let that fail? Isn't that the ultimate horizon for proving the total uselessness of the current bourgeois state for meeting our needs? I'm just very skeptical on unions, because while it's badass to rally everyone and shut things down, and there probably is an effect that has to inspire people since they're taking direct action, it very often fails to bring results and this leads to demoralization and demobilization rather than further radicalization. Unions are only able to exert pressure, and their ability to do so has only weakened with time as monopolies got larger and companies financialized and spread out internationally. Anyways I'm not a fan of deceiving people, and I think it's okay to say that we might need to pass through a period of seeing the failure of reform in order to reach mass revolutionary support, but the role of communists imo should be to prepare to struggle against the state. My reasoning is that there are diehard reformists already and they grow their own movement because they genuinely believe in it. And history shows that once a country gets too strong of a socialist movement, even if it utilizes the bourgeois state, the bourgeoisie flips the table and becomes fascist. We might be better positioned to do something about this if we aren't seen as the idiots that led them here, but as saviors who have been patiently waiting and around which an organized resistance can form. This is essentially what happened with the bolsheviks, though they also did do much union work. But I can't see what in their union work endowed them with leadership over the working class as the formula usually goes, rather I see they were armed and organized at the right time and were able to safeguard the semi-spontaneous insurrection underway. I think there is a difference between "what needs to happen before a revolution can occur" (one of these things is reform being disgraced and workers being organized in a mass way) and "what communists need to do to prepare for successful revolution".

Also, why can't a communist party, with all the activity I posed above, be the mass organization that the party draws from? I just think it's more honest to not funnel people towards something unsuccessful as a front when we could be organizing them towards ends that immediately build power. I think it's probably true that this was the goal of the bolsheviks, and it just happened to be that unions were very powerful back then and seemed to be a key aspect to proletarian rule. Maybe times are different and the form mass organizing takes needs to be different. Or maybe I'm too cynical about the weakness of unions, idk

>>2651432
This is actually a normal criticism which I agree with to an extent. In the modern day there needs to be leadership "depth" due to how easy it is for Imperialists to eliminate individuals. I certainly don't apply Jefetura to the conditions I live in. It did make a lot of sense for Peru though.

>>2660628
Ok, and? Maoists apply material analysis to the situation. If there are peasants, organise the peasants. If there aren't peasants then you don't.

>>2654590
>>2660559
>>2661070
This is just infantile communism, literally what Lenin was calling out a hundred years ago. If we didn't need fronts we wouldn't use them.

>>2658722
>>2658734
Deflecting from the fact Bordiga actually collaborated with fascists.

>>2661902
>infantile communism
I don't think so. Here's what Lenin says:
<"Right doctrinairism persisted in recognising only the old forms, and became utterly bankrupt, for it did not notice the new content. Left doctrinairism persists in the unconditional repudiation of certain old forms, failing to see that the new content is forcing its way through all and sundry forms, that it is our duty as Communists to master all forms, to learn how, with the maximum rapidity, to supplement one form with another, to substitute one for another, and to adapt our tactics to any such change that does not come from our class or from our efforts."

I think it's a persistent right deviation that US communists have in their fetish for unions and tenants unions at a time when they're not historically at the forefront of spontaneous mass action. It would be a left deviation if I said we should shun unions. That's not my position, I just think they're not the play right now. It's important to be able to chase the active needs of the working class. Right now they lack political leadership as well as community. I think that there has been confusion (in a syndicalist direction) about the role of the united front created by the history of the workers' movement. The purpose of united front organizations for communists is that they are a domain of our work. The purpose to themselves is whatever limited campaign they're built on. We co-opt them and use them as spaces to network between individuals, share information, and sometimes recruit from. These can take any form. Unions were one such form. Since unions no longer at the forefront of the workers' movements, and since the largest existing unions mainly act above the workers without bringing them into community, they can be put in a secondary position to other forms of gathering people together where we can network.

I've decided that the united front in the triad as a concept is sound, but it's distorted by calling it that. All it is for communists is communities to do social organizing within. Their political character is not the point. The masses don't need dress reformist dress rehearsals.

>>2660559
People over-focus on unions as the one true mass organization. Unions are important but mass organizations in other areas have their place. IMO mass organizations must target capital or the state which protects capital. Cop-watching seems like a good place to start with mass organizations. Organize around capital and the military weapons of counter-insurgency. So the political, economic, security and information functions of control. Civic action is a military weapon of counter-insurgency and the same applies to homeless shelters and similar organizations. Some bullshit like that. IDK I'm mostly an armchair socialist I guess.

>>2658722
lol

>>2666936
<Counterinsurgency (COIN) is the blend of comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to simultaneously contain insurgency and address its root causes. Unlike conventional warfare, non-military means are often the most effective elements, with military forces playing an enabling role. COIN is an extremely complex undertaking, which demands of policy makers a detailed understanding of their own specialist field, but also a broad knowledge of a wide variety of related disciplines. COIN approaches must be adaptable and agile. Strategies will usually be focused primarily on the population rather than the enemy and will seek to reinforce the legitimacy of the affected government while reducing insurgent influence. This can often only be achieved in concert with political reform to improve the quality of governance and address underlying grievances, many of which may be legitimate. Since U.S. COIN campaigns will normally involve engagement in support of a foreign government (either independently or as part of a coalition), success will often depend on the willingness of that government to undertake the necessary political changes. However great its know-how and enthusiasm, an outside actor can never fully compensate for lack of will, incapacity or counter-productive behavior on the part of the supported government.
I think they already ditched this approach because they understand it is pointless to try to address the root causes, so modern american counter insurgency uses the "enemy-centric" (as defined in that text) approach instead. but even in this old, liberal text you can see some hints of what I understand is the modern american strategy. for example, it says that insurgencies are more dynamic and often use guerrilla tactics to counteract the stronger but more static conventional armies. it follows then, although the text doesn't mention it, that the way to militarily defeat an insurgency is to organize a force that is even more dynamic and unconventional than the insurgency it is fighting, in other words, death squads

>>2666936
Thanks, I'd started reading this already and it's good stuff.

Also I agree, we need to be flexible with the forms that our mass organizations take. This flexibility rests on understanding their real purpose.

The section in the attached pdf on a speech by Chinese comrades is really enlightening on the full spectrum of mass organizations that existed, and how they utilized them. Of course their situation was different because they had an army on the way, so they chose to cycle between escalation and de-escalation of their organizing, which any other context won't have the privilege to do.

Also we need to build tunnels asap

>>2666951
FDR's new deal was peak counter-insurgency, but failing the political initiative/willingness of capital to go to those lengths, genocide is their real answer. When the population is united behind guerrillas all they can do is wipe out the population. If they tried this on their own soil it would be suicidal.

Also I agree that their tactic is to use the tactics of insurgency against insurgency. We need to take the concept of workplace mapping to the geographic level and engage in social mapping so that we can identify, unite, and protect all advanced elements, efficiently reach out to intermediate elements, and be ready to violently suppress any terrorism by the backwards. Revolutionary organizers are at the ground level, giving us the capability to engage in much more granular surveillance and immediate reprisal than the bourgeois forces. Their surveillance relies mostly on our voluntarily opting in to their media and entertainment software, which can be combated by creating our own alternatives in socialist media and recreation clubs where face to face socializing replaces bourgeois social media.