/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

obviously, especially when compared to the east india company it competed with in global commerce

it was the bourgeois revolution for America, since before the reconstruction the south practiced a kind of feudal/manor × slave economy

>>2799786
sorry thought this was about the civil war (I'm drunk)

>>2799787
Kek

the British empire was socialist

>>2799774
it was progressive, but it's just that its progressiveness gets overshadowed by the immensly more progressive French Revolution that laid the foundations of both the mordern order, of the reactionnary order and of the socialist order. The French Revolution is one, if not the, most important event in human history, the American revolution wasn't even close.

I am of two minds about it. Following the case of Somerset vs Stewart (1772) where an English slave was freed upon the illegality of it on domestic soil, the masters of slaves clearly became anxious and sought to hasten independence (the abolitionist movement in Britain gaining much traction in the 1760s). The line of slavery in the colonies followed Elizabeth's original edict to banish negroes elsewhere (1601) - Jamestown being established in 1607. During Cromwell's reign (1653-9), the Irish were also exported to the colonies to serve as indentured servants. In Virginia law codes, chattle slavery began by precedent of John Punch (1640). So, the Anglo-Saxon interest in the colonies was clearly based in slavery, as a reserve for its unlawful activities. The supposed reasons for independence are also entirely bourgeois, in the sense that "taxation without representation" is cited, but it is multi-faceted. There were political idealists of the enlightenment like Rousseau, Smith, Jefferson, Paine, all following Locke, who in 1690, idealised the Frontier itself as an Edenic paradise. Of course, much of the revolutionary rhetoric of America is Lockean in orientation, with the pursuit of "life, liberty and happiness [property]". Paine and Jefferson give an Agrarian vision of America, where the Yeoman has independence, and the Norman Yoke is thrown off. It is indeed a spiritual continuation of the earlier English Civil War (1642-51) which also produced revolutionary literature in the Levellers and Diggers. In the end, I would however say that it is ultimately a pro-slavery rebellion, like the later American civil war, which is the real founding of the American Nation (1865).

I suppose the question we are asking is, should the Colonies have remained part of the British Empire, to which I would absolutely disagree with. The independence of America is good, even if done for wrong reasons. I think the American Nation (1865-) is also an important entity, since it is the only truly multiracial civilisation, especially moving into the 20th century.

No, Paul Cockshott argues in his book that it was a counterrevolution to emulate the Roman republic and that the American civil war was a feudal revolution and America didn't have capitalism until the 20th century

>>2799816
Really? Isn't reconstruction the industrialisation of America? We even get the Robber Barrons like Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan and Vanderbilt in the late 19th century. I would be interested to see where Cockshott makes this claim.

>>2799797
I ageee the French revolution despite being liberal did a lot for socialism, it is literally where the raised fist comes from

>>2799774
Yes, Marx said so. Case closed.

I'm not the biggest hater of America but objectively it wasn’t. It was largely ultra-wealthy elites from the colonies(Washington was one of the richest men in America along with Jefferson and Hancock) rebelling mainly over tax issues and restrictions like not being allowed to expand into Native American territory. Anyway as a non-American/European, I find American nationalism to be just cringe. Both the libertarian right and progressive circles seem to share this bizarre view of America as throwing off the shackles of European tradition/reaction and starting something entirely new. I find the progressive version more frustrating than the former, because it often feels like an attempt to differentiate themselves from Europeans. These are the same people who mock British accents as “colonizer accents,” even though they themselves are the actual colonziers.

A lot of the idealist anti-communist copes actually originate from the era of liberal revolutions, republicanism can only work on a small scale, human nature is le bad so we le betters to lord over ye, etc

>The only existing European republican models—the Netherlands, and the Italian and Swiss city-states—were small and compact, not fit models for the sprawling new nation of the United States. According to the best political science of the day, when a large country with many diverse interests attempted to establish a republic, as England had tried in the seventeenth century, the experiment was sure to end in some sort of dictatorship like that of Oliver Cromwell.
< page 95 the American Revolution: a History by Gordon S Wood

>And because the condition of Man, (as hath been declared in the precedent Chapter) is a condition of Warre of everyone against everyone; in which case everyone is governed by his own Reason, and there is nothing he can make use of, that may not be a help unto him, in preserving his life against his enemies; It followeth that, in such a condition, every man has a Right to every thing–even to one another's body. And therefore, as long as this natural Right of every man to everything endureth, there can be no security to any man, (how strong or wise soever he be) of living out the time, which Nature ordinarily alloweth men to live . . .
>And he that carryeth this Person, is called SOVEREIGN, and said to have Sovereign Power; and everyone besides, his SUBJECT . . .
<https://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~breilly2/18th/absolutism.htm

>>2799960
Also, I don’t really understand the deification of George Washington in particular. He was a capable military officer, but that’s about it, not awful, but during the Revolutionary War there were far superior officers such as Greene, von Steuben, and Cornwallis. In terms of generals in the revolutionary war he would rank near the bottom of the top ten. He was more Crassus than Caesar
The event Americans seem to be obsessed with is him giving up power, which was supposedly something that had never been done before. but that not true, there had been hundreds of republics in Italy and various city-states where elected leaders served for a brief period before stepping down. and he didn’t give up power, he had already won. He was still the wealthiest landowner in Virginia and now with an absolute monopoly on campaigns in Indian territory and fewer regulations to deal with, he had accomplished everything he wanted.

>>2799971
George basically has the same place in burger culture that Stalin does over in Russia
>great man theory
>military strongmen image in pop culture despite not being a particularly gifted strategist
>Cult of Personality around a guy who hates cults of personality
>Pragmatic Centrist more concerned with keeping the young republic together in one piece than infighting between the different factions of the revolutionaries
>poor track record when dealing with national minorities
>blamed for a bunch bullshit that happened while they were the public facing figurehead
>accused of just being a new king by actual monarchists that are just butthurt they lost
>public image where majority believe they were responsible for some pretty heinous shit while also viewing them as a pseudo-action hero of sorts that defeated the imperialist invaders

>>2799992
for
>>2799990

>>2799962
>human nature is le bad so we le betters to lord over ye, etc
That is not the liberal position. The social contract in Hobbes is continued into Locke, by differentiating between the state of nature, or war, and the state of society, which is constituted by a respect of property rights. Advancing from Hobbes, Locke sees property as being based in man's own nature, as self-possessed, and extending from his labour. This is also drawn from Petty's identity of "wealth" as a mixture of labour and nature, and so property is the first form of wealth, which as Locke writes, excludes it from the commons. Once property is naturally established, it esteems mutual protection by the social contract, or civil law (of which all law is in essence, the protection of private property). In Rousseau, there is a reversal, where the state of nature is idealised, and the state of society is the origin of war. Rousseau writes for example, that war is not a conflict between two persons, but a conflict between states, and thus a political construct, not a personal construct (subverting Hobbes). Why then, is the social contract formed? Rousseau postulates a General Will which is realised in political constitution, and for which, the rights of the individual are secured by collective coercion. A republic, as Rousseau writes, is the legitimate form of government, and so if the General Will accords to a monarchy, it is still a republic, based in the 'spiritual' constitution of a people (we might say that a government has its right to rule, only where it abides by the General Will, like what is written by the Whigs in 1709; "Vox Populi, Vox Dei"). This is common to what Locke also wrote about and what is carried into the American Revolution by Jefferson; "the consent of the governed", which sees how popular discontent justifies revolution, which is also reflected in the writings of Thomas Paine.

The Hobbesian social contract is a voluntary delegation of authority within the sovereign; not a monarchical decree over the masses. The sovereign is not supposed to be separate from the people, but the figure which expresses the will of the people, for as he writes, all is against all in the state of nature; where property has no right, and thus order must be given by the constitution of a society, rather than war. Marx's description of capitalism is Hobbesian in this sense, since in perceiving the motion of private property, it is an internal war against itself, and thus the right to property leads to the license of theft. The idea of a "competitive" society certainly adds to this image. If we are all competitors, there cannot be peace. Mendeville asterisk this point by discourses upon the Invisible Hand, but that's another topic. The point is that Liberals were not elitist in their theory, but are consistently speaking of the general public and their self-government.

>>2799774
You're using the liberal definition "historically progressive". Could you explain why that is?

>>2799774
>>2799797
>>2799960
In historical/dialectical materialism, "historically progressive" doesn't simply refer to when "good" things happen or when "the underdog won" or anything of that sort. To really get an appreciation of this, here's Stalin (1938):

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1938/09.htm

>If there are no isolated phenomena in the world, if all phenomena are interconnected and interdependent, then it is clear that every social system and every social movement in history must be evaluated not from the standpoint of "eternal justice" or some other preconceived idea, as is not infrequently done by historians, but from the standpoint of the conditions which gave rise to that system or that social movement and with which they are connected.

>The slave system would be senseless, stupid and unnatural under modern conditions. But under the conditions of a disintegrating primitive communal system, the slave system is a quite understandable and natural phenomenon, since it represents an advance on the primitive communal system.

>The demand for a bourgeois-democratic republic when tsardom and bourgeois society existed, as, let us say, in Russia in 1905, was a quite understandable, proper and revolutionary demand; for at that time a bourgeois republic would have meant a step forward. But now, under the conditions of the U.S.S.R., the demand for a bourgeois-democratic republic would be a senseless and counterrevolutionary demand; for a bourgeois republic would be a retrograde step compared with the Soviet republic.

>Everything depends on the conditions, time and place.

Make sense?

Put simply, the bourgeois revolutions were all historically progressive in the non-moralizing sense of the term "progressive" which is neither pejorative nor euphemistic, but simply scientific and neutral. History was pushed forward. Contradictions either resolved through struggle or pushed closer towards their resolution.

Obviously

>>2799797
>>2799960
>>2799797

Yeah, never mind the fact that "progressive" France converted back into a monarchy in like under 30 years.
And pretty much every great power in the continent from the 19th century onwards was Autocratic until
America decided Europeans being in charge or their fate was more trouble than it was worth and did the UN and Marshall Plan to keep euroids on a leash.

>>2800158
>>2800159
>Progress isn't necessarily good
So why should I support it? I want good things.

>>2800167
The monarchy was restored but many changes brought by the French revolution stayed. No the 19th century was not autocratic, even the most reactionary kings like Charles X and Fernando VII grew unpopular and had to reverse policies. By this time republicanism and parliamentarism started to play a decisive role in society, much to the dismay of ultraconservatives

>>2800204
your support or lack thereof is a weird goalpost to shift the conversation to and in any case amounts to a few ounces of piss in the ocean. Why do so many people on here take this posture of "convince me to support you." This isn't a job interview. Attempt to refute what I have said or don't. It makes no difference.

>>2800167
France became a monarchy again due to foreign pressure.
United states wasn't a democracy in its early years, unlike the French, who were the first to have universal male suffrage.
America never cared for the political systems inside of Europe, hence why they supported Franco and Salazar, they are not responsible for their political states now.

>>2799992
>George basically has the same place in burger culture that Stalin does over in Russia
Wouldn't Lenin make more sense than Stalin?
Lenin is considered the founding father of the USSR and his death lead to successors fighting on who can really live up to Lenin's example. Lenin's cult of personality can only be matched with Washington
A more accurate person to compare Stalin to in the USA is Lincoln

>>2800413
no because stalin has pretty much universal support even amongst russian fascists and nationalists, every side in russia besides western liberals claim some descent from him, they often praise stalin while condemning lenin

>>2800407
I feel like this isn't said often enough, but the American bourgeoisie has an ideology that is basically dark twin of dialectical materialism: Pragmatism

>>2800418
>russian fascists, nationalists, monarchists, and revanchists support stalin
make it make sense

>>2800422
it's not a new trend either, it actually dates back to the 40s, but if you want to know the reason, it's because they view stalin as if he was hitler, and had succeeded

>>2800418
>no because stalin has pretty much universal support even amongst russian fascists and nationalists
Lincoln has universal support from the US population from communists to even fascists becausenthey think he was secretly working to deport black people. Even Confederate dweebs still go on about Lincoln tragically dying leading to a punishing reconstruction. Compared to Washington who is seen as not living up to his revolutionary ideal and is pretty disliked by left wing forces. That is why Lincoln fits Stalin much better than Washington. Lincoln claimed to be a child of the founding father in a similar way to how Stalin described himself with Lenin.

>>2800422
It's really not hard to understand, strong authoritarian leaders matter more than ideology. This is how 99% of the Eastern Bloc sees it, they will openly praise both Fascist and communist histories and see no contradiction
>>2800438
He doesn’t have the feudal like worship that Stalin has. Lincoln is well liked but not outright worshipped; you won’t see priests praising Lincoln statues like you do in ex-USSR.

>>2800440
>He doesn’t have the feudal like worship that Stalin has
In the 19th century and much of the 20th Lincoln absolutely did. The only difference is that Lincoln died a century and half ago. Meanwhile there are people alive who directly remember Stalin and are of living memory. For example Fidel visiting the Lincoln memorial in 1959, the last Civil War veteran died three years prior in 1956.

>>2800383
You literally haven't defined "progress" as anything except something which is not necessarily good, and thus what may be bad - why would I support a bad thing? Why would you?

>>2800452
Once again, not worship, It's difficult to explain the folk-worship in the Eastern Bloc and the Middle East, something you simply do not see in the West.

>>2800440
there's no movement in the USA (with any meaningful influence on society) that upheld lincoln but condemned washington, and vice versa, i mean you can say that was the confederates but they only tangentially upheld washington

>>2800452
your argument kind of backfires because the washington cult was far stronger and resembled the cult around stalin far better, there's literally art in the capitol building showing george washington becoming a god, lincoln was more or less regarded as a great leader, but nothing close to a god

>>2800475
auto-orientalism?

>>2800475
>Once again, not worship, It's difficult to explain the folk-worship in the Eastern Bloc and the Middle East
I feel this argument is really pushing into orientalism. You also do see it in the West such as the MAGA movement being the worship of Trump as a god-emperor. Also Stalin was demonized post-Stalin and only recently had a popularity increase and this is happening to Lenin as well with Levada Center having Lenin as high as 67%. So it is a trend that both are gaining

>>2800487
> there's literally art in the capitol building showing george washington becoming a god
The Lenin Mausoleum alone having him embalmed to see him and his face and figure was everywhere in the USSR makes Lenin equal to George Washington in American culture. Washington's body was supposed to be at the Capitol for example and Washington was seen as the blueprint for how an executive was supposed to be.

>>2800503
historically he would be the george washington figure, nowadays he's not a george washington figure, if anything he's considered more like one of the other founding fathers, mentioned in russia often enough as an important figure for the country, but nowhere the fervency you see even right wingers talk about stalin

It was progressive in the sense it allowed man to better control and regulate nature and society. That progessivism means destruction of nature and people is of little concern. Marx and Engels supported Manifest Destiny because it expanded industry and the Mexicans and Indians didn't use the land well anyway. In this they agreed with Locke. But remember, socialism is not an extension of liberalism, haha.

>>2800504
>historically he would be the george washington figure, nowadays he's not a george washington figure, if anything he's considered more like one of the other founding fathers
The same thing happened to Washington. Washington and Jefferson are heavily demonized nowadays. Now the Founding Fathers are seen as slave holding hypocritical elites or they uphold a founding father like Alexander Hamilton because of media.

>>2800510
And I think we know who Marx and Engels would support between Israel and Palestine, dont we..?

>>2800516
they would probably support a binational solution of some form, one of the first major proto-zionists was moses hess, arguably the first labor zionist, and they didn't like him one bit for his insistence on nationalism

>>2800500
>>2800498
I live in the Middle East and have spent time in Europe. Nothing in the West resembles the kind of folk politics I witnessed. I have seen posters of communists, Fascist collaborators and old kings displayed together without any sense of contradiction. Also,I’m sorry, but I don’t take opinions about Orientalism seriously. Almost no one in the Middle East except a handful of upper-class leftists knows who Said is. He is for diasporoids and by self-hating Westerners.

>>2800516
Engels would have supported national Arab reunification and wouldn’t have cared about ethnic minorities
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkerabf%C3%A4lle

>>2800518
>Nothing in the West resembles the kind of folk politics I witnessed.
I would say MAGA. But besides Romania where can you find fascist collaborators, communists and kings under one umbrella?

>>2800422
>make it make sense
Stalinism as in the political and economic ideas of Stalin? Mostly irrelevant. The funny cult around Stalin? Very relevant and growing since the 2010s but it's tied up in a form of revanchist Russian neoconservatism where the ghost of Stalin can fix the problems, keep people on a war footing, and shoot the idiots who fuck up. There's also a genre of time-travel wish fulfillment fantasy where Stalin will be transported into the body of Nicholas II and then he decides to go with it and make the Russian Empire stable and strong.

>>2800513
>The same thing happened to Washington. Washington and Jefferson are heavily demonized nowadays. Now the Founding Fathers are seen as slave holding hypocritical elites or they uphold a founding father like Alexander Hamilton because of media.
A twist about that is Jefferson was held up as a democratic and progressive figure in the 1930s when FDR was president. The New Deal explicitly promoted a Jeffersonian ideal, and that's when the Jefferson Memorial was constructed. Hamilton's reputation had reached a low point following the meltdown of the financial system and the Great Depression.

>>2800528
>I would say MAGA
MAGA is the one exception to this, It's the only western exception I can think off

>>2800547
They also have hundreds of scenarios where Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union reach a peace deal and work together to destroy the UK and US. There are others Russian alt-his scenarios where the Soviet Union i.e the “Great Russian Empire” solo's everyone, but the US and UK always end up destroyed in every version. It’s honestly pretty hilarious.

>>2799774
white people

I guess the Civil War was the only progressive moment in America and it wasn't possible without the American Revolution…


>>2799797
Word, the American Revolution did created the conditions for the French one too though. If only the American Republic backed the first French Republic in the latter's conflicts, i would considered them 'progressive'.

Obviously it was, whoever say the opposite adopted a Progressive Is When Pro-Brown And Nothing Else irredentism

>>2800553
>>2800558
I'm neither and I don't hate the American people but I fucking America as a nation and consider it the Great Satan.

>>2800510
The main problem with anti-civ ideology in my estimation is that it cannot be implemented because there is no collective will to implement it, and if it were, the people implementing it would be committing suicide. Nature is struggle and evolution. Technology and civilization evolved out of nature. They are not purely and simply a negation of nature. If a bird can build a nest an ape can build house, and eventually, a city, surrounded by farms, paying grain tribute to the temple. The productive forces and forms of exploitation develop alongside the advancement of technique, and the game-theoretical logic of the various forms of human struggle run themselves automatically, independent of our individual willpowers, or our desire to negate the logic of competition for scarce resources with increasingly advanced technologies, or our conservative nostalgic desire to RETVRN fundamentally rooted in moralism: A desire to return to a beautiful and uncorrupted state of nature, when people lived short, brutal, lives, died of simple infections, bone fractures, sometimes dying for mistakes as simple as foraging the wrong fruit/vegetable/fungus and dying for it. To wage anti-civilizational struggle is to wage struggle against the very same productive forces we have accumulated which allow us to multiply and specialize. If technology is an arms race, and the people with the superior technologies and numbers of trained troops win struggles most of the time, then it follows that anti-civilizational struggle is the struggle of the weak, unarmed, and numerical minority to not merely disarm the strong, armed, majority, but to destroy those arms so they are never used again. There is no realistic path to do this. It is a fantasy.

>>2800594
>>2800596
grow up, both of you

>>2799992
>military strongmen image in pop culture despite not being a particularly gifted strategist
Weird, cause the one semi-decent thing you can definitely say about him is that he was the furthest thing from a military strongman. When the Army rebelled and wanted to put him, or some other general in charge (not necessarily in a monarchical form, just as a supreme leader), he rejected it, talked them down and got the soldiers back pay.
As for him on his ability as a military leader, it’s true he wasn’t a truly exceptional general, but he was decent. He knew the right men to assign, kept the Army in check and organized and again as one of the wealthiest men in the colonies, they really couldn’t have fought the war without his money.

>>2801115
Fucking asshole, if he was mor impulsive we might not be the center of imperialism

>>2801115
That said, I would put most of the South American liberators far above Washington. They dealt with much worse circumstances, tougher logistics, more corrupt institutions, more violent and brutal forms of warfare and far more infighting. While the US had arguments in Congress, in South America there were outright wars with each general seizing power.

>>2801131
Not to mention not all of those guys were slavers

>>2801159
>>2801131
They also had to deal with an enemy in a gentlemanly war. Other than against the British native allies there were no massacres or mass lootings. None of the Founding Fathers ever had to fear their entire homes being destroyed or their families being murdered. In Latin American wars, it was brutality on another level, with a destroyed and mangled Spanish Empire, with its established allies in the New World, versus rising local military leaders and mass-conscripted soldiers, with all sides committing massacres and burnings.

>>2801210
Dan Carlin had a great quote about this

>That general who coined New Hampshire's state motto, live free or die, was a revolutionary war general, for example. He wrote that phrase decades after the war and in total freedom and safety. Now I have no doubt he would have been willing to give his life in the service of what was a brand new country during the Revolutionary War. But he could also take some comfort in the idea that he wasn't going to have to give much more than that. I mean, the British were not going to come into the country and after they hanged him, burned his teenage sons and rape his wife and his children and send them off to slavery, burned down his house, destroy his town and stamp out his church. They weren't going to do that. That's a different kind of risk, isn't it?