/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2807142
Winning a debate or tricking someone makes you feel smart, they want to feel smart.

It’s not secret. Most American leftists come from conservative or right-wing households and communities and were conditioned to think like Evangelicals, so they function on the basis their communities can be “saved” if they were preached to. Plus, they still believe their old communities are worth saving. “If only they had the correct politics.”

There's this myth in American culture, pushed largely by the bourgeois media apparatus, that the working class consists of reactionary rubes from nowhere, and that being a reactionary rube from nowhere makes one working class. My lived experience as a working class man from the Rust Belt who has worked with other working class people from the Rust Belt is that this is complete and utter horseshit, and that most of the supposedly "working class" attitudes actually belong to the petit bourgeois. But it's a story that is spammed constantly, and I imagine that, if you come from a more affluent background and don't really interact with the working class that much, it's really all you have to go off of.

>>2807158
I mean, you rarely ever see multi-generational communist families in America. I remember the times I went to Paris and Barcelona and met people whose entire families were anarchists or communists. Like some anarchists I met in Barcelona back in 2010 told me they all had gradfathers who fought in the CNT-FAI during the Spanish Civil War, one of them said her grandmother was part of the Mujeres Libres. Or in Paris you have entire neighbourhoods where nearly everyone is a communist.

In the US, by contrast, the stereotype is always the one black sheep of the family is a radical leftist when the rest of the family is right-wing. If you love your family or childhood community you have an urge to bring them over to your side.

>>2807160
Not to go full Sakai, but the white working-class has a vested interest in promoting reactionary values on the basis they benefit from them. They don't care if they go without healthcare so as long as poor Black and Brown folks don't get healthcare. It's in their interest to preserve the power their whiteness gives them.

>>2807142
>simply because they believe doing so will win right-wring Christians over to socialism
Christianity in America was never overtly tyrannical the way it was in Europe or Latin America. That’s why the U.S. is one of the few places where “Christian anarchism” is taken seriously. Even Liberation a theology is a dying tendency in most Latin countries.

Because bourgeois democratic party politics.

Can bumplock thread now.

>>2807160
Yeah I mean the basis of Trump's support isn't coal miners or steel workers but small business owners. It's kind of funny how much of American culture war bullshit boils down to small business owners vs. PMC, with each side accusing the other side of being footsoldiers of the ruling class.

>>2807163
Anarchists in America talk about why Jesus was an anarchist and how the Catholic Church is "revolutionary".

Meanwhile, anarchists in Catholic-majority countries in Europe talk about burning down Catholic cathedrals. They celebrated when Notre Dame caught fire a few years ago.

>>2807142
How many of these leftists are white, neurotypical, male and cis?

>Why does the left try to affirm universal interests and objective reality?
Why wouldn't it? Do you prefer civil war?

>>2807191
I'm not convinced trying to convert right-wingers to socialism is the correct approach. These people often times have material reasons why they're right-wing.

Because America is a conservative country. If it's true you can't turn conservatives into socialists en masse, then America will never be socialist, unless it comes from without.

>>2807195
So left-wing ideas arent actually correct, then?

>>2807203
How did you make that jump? Our goal isn't to play missionary. Pandering to right-wingers isn't going to do anything.

>>2807204
If someone is wrong, you correct them - you are saying that some people are born to be irrational. This is against the spirit of truth.

>>2807205
Since when are leftists concerned with muh truth?

>>2807206
So we return again to my question; are left-wing ideas believed because they are true, or not?

>>2807207
Yeas, they are Truth.

>>2807208
Okay, so if we are left-wing, we must then be motivated by Truth, and want to spread it.

>>2807207
Leftist ideas are believed because the people believing in them have a class interest for doing so.

You're not going to find "TRUTH" in leftism the way you would in a religious dogma.

>>2807163
The only Catholic socialists I know in America are white cishet males who aren't affected by the Church's hyper-reactionary stance on women and queer people.

All of the Hispanic comrades I know who were raised Catholic hate the Church.

>>2807212
Okay, so to you, left-wing ideas are NOT true
So your belief in left-wing ideas is IRRATIONAL

The American Left has broadly been saddled with the claim of being "detached" from broader American culture and so trying to "convert" Right Wingers comes across an attempt to "atone" for that.

Basically the Left here comes across as despising the working class; a kind of transferred nationalism where they wish they were Soviet or Chinese citizens or anything other than American. The "lets convert the Right" is a kind of overcompensation to make up for that obvious disgust and hatred of working class Americans.

>>2807215
It's not about MUH TRUTH but about CLASS INTERESTS. Where in Marx does he affirm the belief in absolute truth?

Also, even if we assume your dogma is correct, on what basis are leftists obligated to make converts of right-wingers, especially when most right-wingers have a vested interest in remaining right-wing? We are not Christian missionaries. "TRUTH" is not the goal, class struggle is.

>>2807217
>Its not about truth
Right, so you live in a constant state of irrationality and animal passions. Makes me wonder why you are even talking to other people if you fundamentally deny the validity of public reason, especially since you see political conversion as misguided.

it is because leftists and blue liberals are absolute vermin. here, let me make it simple for you. as we are seeing trump engage in policies that frankly speaking any other liberal politician was going to implement, we see a pronounced increase in disillusioned maga voters who have little else to turn to at this point. meanwhile, what would happen if some blue liberal were to get voted in like obama and nothing happens? none of these blue libs would get disillusioned at all in comparison. and under the trump administration, many people dont see anything that has been happening as a problem of capitalism. no, it is because trump is uniquely evil somehow. suffering is supposed to be the greatest teacher and so those who are unable to heed it are genuine scum. magats are far better to get on good terms with because after the sword of God smites them for their hubristic idealism, they at least have the decency to begin bowing down their heads. liberals will never ever do this, they are below dogs for this reason. leftists meanwhile are also all garage larpers who barely change any of their strategy even as the productive forces shift. they are dinosaurs, but for some reason a meteor hasnt yet come to make them completely extinct yet

the future belongs to cults and i personally wouldnt want to recruit scums that cant realize that the world is in a constant state of necessary decay and able to acknowledge hitherto strategies in the west have all been failures. that is the absolute bottom line for me

>>2807217
what vested interest when red states are all poorer and less developed than blue states? oh no because they are christian this overrides material reality. fucking idealists AAAAAAAAH I HATE LEFTISTS SO MUCH

>>2807216
Like I said earlier, the stereotypical American leftist is a social outsider who didn't fit in with their right-wing family, yet they still feel like they want to "save" their family due to all that sentimental shit. You barely see anything of an authentic leftist culture in the US.

>>2807224
See I disagree on this. The "stereotypical American leftist" to me is someone who doesn't give a fuck about his family. They don't care about their family, their town, or their country; they'll care about causes frankly alien to the struggles of the working class. If some guy in a podunk town in the midwest learns his kid has brain cancer and can't afford treatment, they won't even spare a glance at 'em.

Shit, we've got Felix on this very board ranting and raving about how "America MUST be destroyed"; it's essentially telling people struggling "I want your lives to be WORSE for some far-fetched ideals."

And so I think a few Leftists in America overcorrect on that and try to develop some bizarre form of leftism that they hope panders to Americans, which ultimately still ignores the root issues a lot of Americans are facing. You've got one faction, the largest I'd argue, that sneer at the idea of life getting worse for broad swathes of the country. Then you've got another that thinks if it wears cowboy hats it'll appeal to people who feel unrepresented and immiserated.

>>2807224
Or, a lot of leftists envy the fact right-wing people still have a sense of family and community whereas leftists largely do not. They see the closeness and mutual aid of conservative families and small towns and want that for themselves, only under the banner of socialism.

>>2807227
All of this is correct.

>>2807142
I think an underlying major premise of a lot of liberals and leftists is a belief rooted in Enlightenment humanism that people are instrinsically sympathetic and reasonable, they're just spoiled by a nefariously evil corporate-media political machine that manipulates them via cultural backlash. But if the people were enlightened then they'd behave better and more decently and elect sensible New Deal Democrats in every election. However, what if you allow that tens of millions of Americans are defiantly mean bullies who actively collaborate with that evil corporate machine and that they're not actually good people? What if they're just as loathsome as the billionaires who they adore? That whole left-progressive edifice collapses.

>>2807242
Anyone who has ever lived around conservatives can attest to this.

I'm from Maryland. Poor whites in the Appalachian part of the state as well as the more rural areas will say horrible things about poor Black people in Baltimore and Prince George's County. Lots of "at least I'm not on welfare" type remarks. Also loads of sexism and support for abortion bans and the destruction of trans rights. I would rather not organize with people like that.

>>2807142
Teabaggers and MAGAts were/are both petit-bourg not proles.

>>2807158
It is now misguided Christian impulse to *checks notes* uh convince people of your position.

These are dipshits on leftypol dot org who will stop at nothing to convince themselves doing nothing is the correct course of action

>>2807247
Don't worry, you are a typical American who barely hides his disdain for his neighbors. You weren't going to organize anyway! One day a proletariat that is finally worthy of your exceptional American magnanimity will be born.

I remember when all online leftists from idpozzed tumblr to "based" anti-idpol 8chan leftypol were making tedious, autistic "educational" "memes" with walls of text to convert chuds and wignats to leftism. Between wokeness and this 2012 to 2022 was the most pathetic decade of leftism ever. We litteraly were in power in the places that mattered and had mild support from billionaires/elites but these lunatics prefered to piss away all this political capital into convincing chuds (…why?) and culture warring on the behalf of insane radfems over important issues like manspreading and hollywood stars having slut regret just to be stabbed in the back by these people over transgender issues anyway lmfao. Unbelievable. And how could i forgot censoring the internut on the behalf of likud because that fat wordcel Richard Spencer IRL fedposted too hard in Charlottesville…
uyghas will say it was some 4D chess plot by DA ELITES!!! to take attention from OWS but i disagree i was familiar with both grassroot and champagne leftists at the time, everything was purely organic and self inflicted.

>>2807283
Billionares never supported us at all. and tumblerites are liberals LARPing as "leftists".

>>2807286
Everyone is a leftist larping as leftist and billionaires never supported scary blacked wojak

>>2807283
The Internet isn't real
The revolution will not be on your algorithm

>>2807291
It's real but in the same way the TV was in boomers glory days

>>2807267
What’s the point of converting right-wingers?

>>2807508
the majority of right wingers arnt chronically online chuds or right wing podcasters they are working people who choose right wing ideology out of the conditions providing it to them as the means to address their problems

the "point" is that these peoples class interests exist are real and can be communicated and understood when they have an actual means of advocating for themselves as a worker

>>2807511
And how effective is missionizing to them?

Have you ever seen a conservative become a Marxist due to a Marxist educating them?

>>2807214
Yeah the new “woke pope” is still queerphobic as fuck.

>>2807513
Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhb3rJUMRw

communism is post-christianity

Because they’re too pussy to entertain killing their family and neighbors

>>2807521
Fantasizing about killing your neighbors is deeply American and individualistic. That there are terminally online "leftists" that engage in this and insist it is actually revolutionary is extremely ironic

>>2807189
t radlib

>>2807555
What the fuck do you think a revolution is? A dinner party? Poetry sessions?

>>2807566
Oh yeah no the October revolution is when all the soviets killed each other for being KKKzarists

>>2807570
You’re not getting a revolution from American workers, you’re gonna have to convince Chinese soldiers in your neighborhood to give you a gun and that you’ll follow orders

>>2807575
When the revolution happens you will be so desperate for change that you will look back on your naive internet poisoned opinions and laugh

>>2807162
A good portion of the American working class is not white. In fact, at least half (actually probably over half) of my coworkers have been some variety of racial minority. Beyond that, a lot of the American working class also consists of young people trying to scrounge up enough time and money to get a degree in hopes of moving upwards into the PMC. I've known at least two people who were working three jobs in order to pay for college. The working class in real life does not look as it does on TV.

>>2807220
First, you're working to the dumbass logic that there is "an American working class". What defines the working class is its relationship to the means of production, not its allegiance to this or that clique. Our goal is to unite the various factions of the working class, not to pander to your preferred subset of it.

Second, leftists have, in large part, already turned on the democratic party, and did so well before the MAGA crowd did Trump. The fallout of the Gaza genocide resulted in a failure of the democrats to engage with their base that is generally agreed, even amongst pro-Israel bourgeois commentators, to have played a large part in the democrats losing the 2024 election.

Third, the class interests of the MAGA base are generally petite bourgeois and labor-aristocratic. Truckers and small farmers are not interested in communism, they're interested in democratic-socialism at best, fascism the rest of the time. Insofar as they are aware of Marxism, they flatly reject it, and experience shows that attempts to bring them further left has instead dragged whoever is preaching to them further right.

Finally, you're ignoring the much larger, much more politically useful group of people who aren't engaged in mainstream American politics to begin with. Most people, especially those in the working class, have more or less material interests; they want a bigger house, a faster car, more free time, a job that doesn't treat them like shit, etc. They might have some vaguely defined ideology, but it's a secondary factor in their life that they don't actually take all that seriously. These are the people you want to go for, not retarded MAGA cultists.

>>2807511
Why specifically target the right?

>>2807217
I'm not sure what you mean by "absolute truth" but yeah Marx said you should investigate real people in the real world and find the true causes of social phenomenon so you can better change it to your liking. That's why him and Engels liked to fancy themselves as "scientific socialists."

>>2807627
Marx was also an instrumentalist; he saw science as a tool to advance human interests, rather than an abstract study of truth. This didn't mean that he didn't believe in objective truth, more that it was not the objective of his science.

>>2807160
>There's this myth in American culture, pushed largely by the bourgeois media apparatus, that the working class consists of reactionary rubes from nowhere
> if you come from a more affluent background and don't really interact with the working class that much, it's really all you have to go off of.

this is the origin of the all the so-called """third-worldism""" and sakai shit on the board. Its just suburbanite "ex" /pol/yps who never got out there bubble and just assume everyone else in the country is as reprehensible as their petty bourgeois peer group while still maintaining a fundamentally moralist worldview that prioritizes ethnic,national and racial bullshit as the primary contradiction over class struggle.

>>2807614
You dont you speak to workers as they are where they happen to be

>>2807673
You obviously aren't a worker.

>>2807238
See I'm going to play devils advocate here and say that this sense of some "deeply conservative family unity" is often (but not always!) undergirded by toxic family dynamics that are meticulously sheltered from the public eye. Shit like Uncle Bob getting drunk one night and holding a razor-sharp hunting knife to his wife's face "as a joke" or parents stealing their kids' social security numbers to max out their credit cards then whining they don't talk to them anymore.

Behind this edifice of the White Patriarch protecting his hearth and home is an undercurrent of abuse and poisonous relationships. Again, this isn't the entirety of the conservative family dynamic (Lord knows I've met quite a few upright, if conservative, family men) but sometimes the college educated Leftist who doesn't talk to their family anymore has every reason not to. Sometimes the stern conservative patriarch isn't actually "tough but fair" but instead a narcissistic psycho power tripping.

>>2807142
>Hell, I see so many atheist leftists repeat the "JESUS WAS A SOCIALIST" mantra despite having zero stake in any Christian theology, simply because they believe doing so will win right-wring Christians over to socialism.
I think the point of that slogan is more to convert liberal or moderate Christians (who actually vastly outnumber fanatical rightoids) to socialism.
>I also see heavy, heavy romanticization of Appalachia and Appalachian culture to the point where comrades will say things like: "WE NEED TO TAKE BACK THE TERM 'REDNECK' AND MAKE IT RADICAL AGAIN!"
I think that's just a reaction to the extent to which idpol dominates the American left. Appalachia and the OG rednecks are an example of white people producing radical politics and resistance to capital. Drawing on those traditions is seen as a way to get white workers on board with a movement that very often appeals to race or other identity categories.
>cool story bro, Harlan County voted for Trump by over 80%
I don't think that really matters. People always cite voting for the GOP as proof of a population being hopelessly reactionary, but voting for the Democrats is hardly a radical act. Frankly some diehard Democrat voting bases (e.g. urban middle class PMCs) are just as hostile to socialism as the craziest MAGA. They made it pretty clear in 2016 that they'd rather have a Trump than a Bernie. The focus on regions like Appalachia or poor rural people in general simply have to do with the fact that these people are poor, and socialism is in line with their class interests.
>When I speak to comrades in Europe, Asia, or LatAm, they make it very clear there is no converting a fascist or a communist, or a TradCath to anarchist.
I think you're misunderstanding what people are trying to do here. They're simply trying to appeal to the class interests of a demographic that has been captured by the GOP by the culture war in spite of its class interests. I don't think there's much difference between this and say, getting Black people to stop voting Democrat and become socialists instead.

>>2807167
>It's kind of funny how much of American culture war bullshit boils down to small business owners vs. PMC
That's American politics in a nutshell, since these are the actual mass bases of the Republican and Democratic parties. Generally speaking, both the big bourgeoisie and poor workers are less committed to the partisan divide because in both cases the outcome makes little difference to them. Both parties serve the ruling class and shit on workers, so porkies are equally benefitted while proles are equally harmed by both. It's only the middle-strata hangers on that have a real stake in the outcomes of elections.

>>2807162
>They don't care if they go without healthcare so as long as poor Black and Brown folks don't get healthcare
That's not an example of how white workers benefit from racism, it's an example of the opposite. It's white workers prioritizing racial hatred over direct, material benefits to themselves. Only the bourgeoisie gain from such an attitude.

people by and large have a natural tendency to assume good faith and have trouble distinguishing a mindless automated wind-up toy from an actual human being with the capacity for thought and learning and genuine curiosity, they assume the right-winger they are arguing with is a well-meaning rational human being at heart who is simply misinformed rather than a manipulative narcissistic troll who doesn't actually want to know anything. it's the same reason you see people talking to AI chatbots and using them as therapists and pouring their hearts out to these dumb machines as if they were actual human beings capable of understanding them.

>>2807612
>First, you're working to the dumbass logic that there is "an American working class"
when did i once say "working class" anywhere? and YOU are the one that is fagging for your own preferred subset. i am just pointing out why the other groups are genuine cattle and will never do anything because they are too hypnotized by "democracy" so you might as well diversify investments. the most basic prerequisite for any sort of radicalization is they do not buy into this scam reality anymore. leftists always forget that when marx was writing, communism was a SPECTRE! do you know what that means? THE WORKERS ALREADY KNEW THEY WERE EXPLOITED THEY DIDNT FUCKING NEED DAS KAPITAL TO TELL THEM! it is either they are ready to listen to a secondary power or not, and if they are not, they are frankly useless and should suffer more until they see the light. may God of Material Reality or Material Reality smite them
>Second, leftists have, in large part, already turned on the democratic party, and did so well before the MAGA crowd did Trump
most of these people are still in utter denial. their constant complaints about democrats is proof that they are still utterly married to them spiritually. their thinking is still too moralistic, and besides trump is "way worse" anyways. we are still many years away from most of these people waking up in any actual substantial capacity. until the sentiment squarely becomes "to hell with all of them!" they still suck
>the class interests of the MAGA base are generally petite bourgeois and labor-aristocratic
by that logic lenin shouldnt have worked with the peasants because they werent proles. leftoids love judging in terms of how "radical" people's IDEALS are, but of course communism is not an ideal. what are the tendencies as they actually manifest? who are the people whose antagonisms have actually been transmuted into a general distrust for bourgeois institutions? this isnt to mention that there are a ton of magats who are just generally poor and uneducated too. red states are also generally much less developed and have been more exploited. with more robust safety nets in place and better infrastructure, blue states have been capable of asserting a firmer authority over the constituency, and their competence has given them a problematic legitimacy in comparison. of course the leftist doesnt understand authority and often has a pathological hatred of it so they naturally struggle to ever think about the subject of popular legitimacy at all. no wonder fascists always win (amongst a host of other reasons). it is truly tragic
>has instead dragged whoever is preaching to them further right
you are confusing cause and effect here. it is the people who were already socially conservative and didnt care about liberal idpol that bothered with magats in the first place. they didnt get "dragged to the right". unless you are talking about blue liberal politicians who were always right wing and cynical to begin with
>you're ignoring the much larger, much more politically useful group of people who aren't engaged in mainstream American politics to begin with
im not ignoring shit. do i need to repeat myself?
<i personally wouldnt want to recruit scums that cant realize that the world is in a constant state of necessary decay and able to acknowledge hitherto strategies in the west have all been failures. that is the absolute bottom line for me
i dont care if they are right wing or not, and i certainly do not care if they have not engaged in any of these partisan games to begin with. either the hand of God has pummelled them enough into the dirt that they are now willing to listen to reason or they are garbage. it really is that simple

honestly as i am writing this my mania has started to wane .. it is a beautiful day. there's more than one way to boil and egg. at the end of the day dems can be delusional as they want. at the end of the day you just need to show them very concretely that what you are doing is clearly something superior. not that bastard leftists are capable of such a thing. it is a shame really. i guess we all have work to do huh

>>2807841
>That's not an example of how white workers benefit from racism, it's an example of the opposite. It's white workers prioritizing racial hatred over direct, material benefits to themselves. Only the bourgeoisie gain from such an attitude.

Yeah that's kind of the odd thing when I see discussions about the role of racism in American politics; like people will use examples of white workers cutting their nose to spite their face and then simultaneously say "Well they're benefiting from that racism"

>>2807913
It's especially strange when you consider that there actually are a lot more credible examples such as being favoured by discriminatory hiring practices, redlining, wage gaps, etc. However the thing about all of these is that white people (especially more conservative ones) are less likely to even believe they exist. You won't find white workers consciously acknowledging that they might have gotten the job over a Black person because of racism, on the contrary they'll vehemently insist that they did it entirely on their own merits. If this is the case then how could the consciously seek to preserve these disparities?

>>2807673
Why bother trying to “win” over racist and sexist white workers? I don’t want a left dominated by people who used to be MAGAts and who probably retain a lot of those same prejudices.

>>2807142
free speech and debate is part of the anglo-burger liberal mythology

>>2807158
nah debate addiction also exists in secular liberal households. this is all a product of the enlightenment. "Freedom Equality Property and Bentham" as Marx jests in volume 1 of Capital

>>2807900
>and YOU are the one that is fagging for your own preferred subset
No I'm not? I really don't give a shit about people's personal moral opinions so long as we want to achieve the same ultimate goal.

>i am just pointing out why the other groups are genuine cattle and will never do anything because they are too hypnotized by "democracy" so you might as well diversify investments.
>most of these people are still in utter denial. their constant complaints about democrats is proof that they are still utterly married to them spiritually. their thinking is still too moralistic, and besides trump is "way worse" anyways. we are still many years away from most of these people waking up in any actual substantial capacity. until the sentiment squarely becomes "to hell with all of them!" they still suck
This contradicts my own lived experience. It may just be that we're interacting with different people though. Voting for a politician or political party does not mean loyalty to this politician or party, by the way. "I voted for Harris because she's more tolerable than Trump" is a very different sentiment from "I heckin love the Democratic party!!!". And even then, I've met a significant number of people who are of the belief that voting at all at this point makes you complicit in genocide.

>by that logic lenin shouldnt have worked with the peasants because they werent proles.
Not really. Peasants and proles are both at the bottom of their respective class systems, and have very little to lose in the event of a revolution. The petite bourgeois and labor aristocracy, the core components of the MAGA movement, are driven not by unmet need, but by fear of downward social mobility in the face of an expanding haute bourgeois. Their biggest fear is being made a member of the proletariat, so obviously, Marxism is a no-go for the vast majority of them. Instead, when backed into a corner, they will instinctively spring for ideologies that protect them from proletarianization; democratic socialism, Keynesianism, fascism, etc.

>red states are also generally much less developed
And also also generally much lower population density. Like it or not, but the places where people actually live are, objectively, more relevant than random municipalities in the middle of nowhere. And again, I'm saying this as someone from the Rust Belt. Also also also, the idea of "red states" and "blue states" is an illusion created by the US electoral system. In reality, all states are some shade of purple. I myself live in a "blue" state, but am within a "red" district. Within my district, the actual opinions you see of every day people are roughly 50/50.

>and have been more exploited
Elaborate, because on its own that's an incredibly vague statement.

>with more robust safety nets in place and better infrastructure, blue states have been capable of asserting a firmer authority over the constituency, and their competence has given them a problematic legitimacy in comparison.
This does apply to an extent, but it isn't as much of a factor as you'd think, nor does it mean quite what you think it does. First, I live in Upstate New York, and my city looks like it's out of a decaying post-Soviet country. Second, being worse off doesn't automatically make a population more revolutionary. You know how people complain that school doesn't actually teach you any practical skills? That's actually deliberate; the US government knew that an educated, self-sufficient working class would be more capable of revolution, so they made sure that the public school system wouldn't teach people anything dangerous. This is true by the way, look it up. Having more resources does make one more comfortable, but it also makes one more equipped to stand up and fight.

>of course the leftist doesnt understand authority and often has a pathological hatred of it so they naturally struggle to ever think about the subject of popular legitimacy at all.
Going back to something I brought up earlier, if what we care about is "popular legitimacy", then places with high population densities, AKA cities AKA generally liberal areas are more relevant. Of course, that doesn't matter, because "popular legitimacy" is stupid. A state is going to contain a ton of different people with a ton of different wants, needs, and beliefs. The goal of proletarian democracy isn't to just reflect what is popular, it is to look at the big picture, and figure out solutions that are able to please everyone at once, or to at least get as close as practically possible.

>no wonder fascists always win
They do? That's news to me!

>you are confusing cause and effect here.
And you are confusing what I'm trying to say generally. Everyone I've ever seen who's tried going for the "MAGA but socialist" angle has, invariably, ended up more MAGA than socialist. The MAGA audience's appetite for MAGA is much greater than its appetite for socialism. If you want to sell them socialism, you're going to have to make so many concessions to their existing political sensibilities that you end up with something that is, in substance, closer to democratic socialism than socialism socialism.

>i dont care if they are right wing or not, and i certainly do not care if they have not engaged in any of these partisan games to begin with. either the hand of God has pummelled them enough into the dirt that they are now willing to listen to reason or they are garbage. it really is that simple
I'm not saying that it's morally wrong to work with these people, I'm telling you that it's pragmatically stupid.

>honestly as i am writing this my mania has started to wane .. it is a beautiful day. there's more than one way to boil and egg. at the end of the day dems can be delusional as they want. at the end of the day you just need to show them very concretely that what you are doing is clearly something superior. not that bastard leftists are capable of such a thing. it is a shame really. i guess we all have work to do huh
You know, what with this badass quote and your badass anime avatarfagging, you seem like a real winner.

For the record, I'm not a leftist. My personal politics are centrist, and for the most part, I just want nice things and stability. I don't really give a shit about gay sex or abortions or whatever either way, I just want to live like the wealthy in the suburbs do, and for others to be able to do so as well. If this too is something you want, then I'm more than willing to work with you, regardless of the particularities of your views. Otherwise, you can fuck off.

>>2807958
those beliefs are a product of material conditions and stage of consciousness when you deconstruct the struggle on class boundaries the problems of identity politics can be overcome

Right wingers are not more anti-communist than liberals or left wingers. The leftist who falsifies Marxism is just as anticommunist as a Mises fanboy or a Fuentes listener. And leftists are also capable of being just as reactionary as right wingers, what with their support of brutal bourgeois dictatorships and their support of imperialist wars all over the world.

Like it or not, the vast majority of people in the world are anticommunist. Bourgeois ideology infects everyone, and libs and leftoids are not better off, but in many cases worse than rightoids in this regard. So you target everyone for your propagandising.

>>2808019
truth nuke

>>2807958
Well I want the working class to liberate itself no matter if it is ideologically pure or bearing the marks of its circumstances, but what do I know I'm just a Marxist

>>2808019
Crazy admit sounds there is some truth to this. Stop worrying about ideology and start organizing your workplace

>>2808025
And what I'm telling you is that your idea of "the working class" is an artificial cultural stereotype based on what the bourgeois media apparatus has been feeding you. Working class people are human being just like you; we have a wide variety of opinions all over the political spectrum, and many of us aren't very "political" in the idpol sense to start with. If you're genuinely trying to appeal to the working class, you'd try speaking to all of us, not just this one singular subset of retards.

>>2808027
I already have, how about you?

>>2808014
>is a very different sentiment from "I heckin love the Democratic party!!!"
it doesnt matter if they love them or not. it is the fact that this is what they are convinced is legitimate politics. they do not understand deep down yet that it is all a scam. watch as these people slobber over owning hecking trump during the midterms. its tragic really. even the epstein files were not enough to shake many of these people from the spell of neo-liberalism institutionalism. the mind truly struggles to comprehend it
>Their biggest fear is being made a member of the proletariat
as was the natural fear of peasants as well. yet somehow the soviets managed to collectivize their agriculture. given america's geography they wouldnt even have to try as hard to accelerate collectivization if they really wanted to, leading to less sabotage
>And also also generally much lower population density
this is true but strict population does not always matter. getting a large number of lumpen on board is not the same thing as getting a large number of peasants. as the latter own farms, securing them leads to securing a greater share of the forces of production. at any rate you take what you can get. who are the people who are actually unable to trust any of the ruling institutions at this point in time? maga demoralization has created an easily identifiable demographic in this regard to target. it is a sensical strategy
>Elaborate, because on its own that's an incredibly vague statement.
first of all, they are more likely to work in actually productive labour like manufacturing or construction. second of all, even if we are not talking about exploitation in the strictest sense, the degree of socialization is inversely proportional to the degree to which the labour is alienated. the significance of their labour is hence not the same on this level either
>Second, being worse off doesn't automatically make a population more revolutionary
of course. at the end of the day all of their education does not mean anything if they are still living in the matrix. what matters is the bottom line that i talked about. if they do not meet it, they havent suffered enough to be ripe yet, though i guess they can be still shown the way. also legitimacy is not just reflecting what is "popular" or not. it is about being able to sustain the idea that the government, the entire system, is a legitimate one, that it shouldnt just be completely torn at the seams. democrats are far better than doing this than republicans, even when they do not always give the people what they want
>They do? That's news to me!
i hope this is sarcasm or you are ready to show me when industrially developed western nations have chosen socialism over fascism
>has, invariably, ended up more MAGA than socialist
who and when? ive never seen these people say anything further right than deng xiaoping. needless to say i also respect china far more than impotent leftist scums
>For the record, I'm not a leftist. My personal politics are centrist
then why the fuck are you pearl-clutching about making concessions to the right? sounds like you are more interested in seething at internet personalities rather than being honest with yourself about how stupid americans are
>I just want to live like the wealthy in the suburbs do
why are you bringing up labour aristocrats in the first place then?
>You know, what with this badass quote and your badass anime avatarfagging, you seem like a real winner.
leftists are all larpers anyways. who cares? its more fun calling people damn bastards than treating any of them as though they are real or entertaining their LARP support of leftist movements that happened a century ago. the way i see it, i am ten times less of the roleplayer here

>>2808019
dangerously redpilled

>>2807160
>My lived experience as a working class man from the Rust Belt who has worked with other working class people from the Rust Belt is that this is complete and utter horseshit
I have a funny feeling you might be one of those class larpers who went off to college and never actually worked that much(if at all), but still wants to pretend they're one with the working class and knows their true feelings about everything and that they're all secretly progressive, such class larpers seem to be becoming more and more common.

i've worked as a factory labourer at an abattoir(i put meat in bags all day) and i know full well what all the other laborer's there thought of immigrants and trans people, because they told me.

<most of the supposedly "working class" attitudes actually belong to the petit bourgeois.
Increasingly common Uni student cope. There seems to be these increasingly frequent attempts to try and pretend the working class is actually socially progressive and its the petite bougie that are the real chuds

The working class is just economically left wing and socially conservative, they like economic protectionism and don't like immigrants, same as they did 20 years ago.

>>2808093
>it doesnt matter if they love them or not. it is the fact that this is what they are convinced is legitimate politics. they do not understand deep down yet that it is all a scam. watch as these people slobber over owning hecking trump during the midterms. its tragic really. even the epstein files were not enough to shake many of these people from the spell of neo-liberalism institutionalism. the mind truly struggles to comprehend it
You don't know enough leftists then.

>as was the natural fear of peasants as well.
To an extent. But that's nothing compared to the class anxiety of the downwardly mobile petit bourgeois.

>who and when?
Mostly internet people. It was a lot of what Leftypol itself was in the early days. I alluded to a current example earlier ITT, but I'm not going to name him outright because I know he gets off to people talking about him.

>then why the fuck are you pearl-clutching about making concessions to the right?
I'm not. I'm telling you that you're an idiot for thinking these concessions will ever get you anywhere.

>the way i see it, i am ten times less of the roleplayer here
I wasn't calling you inauthentic, I was calling you a faggot.

If this reply seems low effort, it's because it is. It's getting late and I lack the energy to actually care about this discussion anymore.

>I have a funny feeling you might be one of those class larpers who went off to college and never actually worked that much(if at all), but still wants to pretend they're one with the working class and knows their true feelings about everything and that they're all secretly progressive, such class larpers seem to be becoming more and more common.
I work for a cleaning service. I've done everything from vacuum banks to pick up literal dog shit. Take your assumptions and shove em up your ass.

>There seems to be these increasingly frequent attempts to try and pretend the working class is actually socially progressive
I'm not, and I don't know why you assume I am.

>The working class is just economically left wing and socially conservative
The working class consists of a lot of people with a lot of differing views. Insofar as consensus does exist, the average is Joe Rogan-Rogan-type "conservatism" that would have been centrism in the 90s, not MAGA retardation.

>>2807836
>I think the point of that slogan is more to convert liberal or moderate Christians (who actually vastly outnumber fanatical rightoids) to socialism.
I have only ever seen it be used as a GOTCHA against right-wingers.

>>2807214
Do Catholic anarchists exist outside of the US at all? Will I find Catholic anarchists in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Italy, etc.?

>>2808139
No such thing, anarchism is incompatible with religion, there are only confused anarchists and people posing as anarchist

part of the problem is that the US left has not meaningfully been a thing since like the 70s, and even then the New Left was really sloppy and vibes based a lot of the time in its theory and praxis. the so-called left in the US today seems to largely be either people with good intentions but who are still basically libs or like lumpen street gangs (a lot of anarchists fall into this camp and I think the latter is at least capable of throwing down and doing shit) or otherwise ideologues detached from reality who have an autistic special interest in like Leninism or something. either way people end up uncritically reproducing their programming with a lot of things, like in this case the liberal bourgeois myth that political change happens through rational civil debate and that ideas rather than material conditions and violence are what drives history. additionally a lot of the culture of Protestantism and esp Evangelicalism remains in the need to proselytize and save people, so you have leftoids who think we can only do a successful revolution by winning over backwards classes of people instead of like forming a vanguard and seizing power and killing everyone who disagrees with us like how history always happens.

Marxists are supposed to educate people out of their old superstitions, not reinforce them. All the pandering to Christian fundamentalists (including TradCaths), rednecks, racist white workers, social conservatives, MAGA people, etc. shows nothing but defeatism. And even if pandering is what we wanted to do, how would we do it pragmatically-speaking? Your average Catholic doesn't care if you're interpreting the Bible in a socialist way, they're simply going to follow whatever the Church and their priest say. Rednecks don't give a shit about Appalachian coal miners fighting the bosses 100 years ago, they already have their own political loyalties. What good does any of this do?

>>2808140
That, and Catholicism has a strict hierarchy built into it. The Church is supposed to function as a state.

We first need to ask the question of what (psychologically) motivates people to engage in politics at all and become right or left
Because it's not JUST their rational material interest

>>2808213
Where do one's values come from?

>>2808217
I think you are going to say people are shaped by their material circumstances during their development and I agree but then I still don't understand how for some people hatred of X-group of people is enough of a motivating factor to influence their politics

>>2807142
If an American Maoist had to kill every person who was against socialism or abortion or atheism, they would be killing a substantial portion of the country.

Executioners in China had to move to smaller caliber bullets due to the damage done onto their wrists.

Killing off your labor force is not wise.

>>2808136
People definitely try and use it as that too, but while it would probably fail in 99% of cases you may actually encounter somebody who let's their faith shape their politics rather than the other way around. I think it's still a good slogan in general since it's A) true that Christian values as espoused by Jesus are wholly incompatible with capitalism, and B) America is a predominantly Christian country and we should expect that this will shape the development and expression of socialism there.

They can't conceive a future where they're not using twitter / bluesky, so they think if they can just win enough debates that twitter and bluesky will magically become leftist websites, and none of their friends will leave them to go use activitypub instead.

>>2808217
It's an intersection of class, culturally instilled beliefs, individual life experiences, and temperament.

Using myself as an example, I am, by nature, sensitive, particular, and easily bored. If I grew up in a wealthy family, I would absolutely ended up like the kind of spoiled sociopathic treatlerite future heirs to small business dynasties that lived in the suburbs. Instead, I grew in a house where I was told "no" constantly, "no, we're not getting you that game", "no, we're not getting you that bike" "no we're not getting you those trading cards", etc. It lead me to fantasize about improving my material conditions, which in the long lerm lead me to Marxism. I also grew up in a fairly secular house, so I wasn't distracted by religion. If we were religious, there's a good chance I would have embrace Christian asceticism as a means of easing the pain, believing that I'd end up in heaven at the end of it. But I didn't, and it instead drew me to technology and later politics as things that could make life materially better.

>>2808306
There is no logical reason why leftists should pander to Christianity. We’re always going to be out-pandered by the right anyway.

>>2807142
I have an outsider perspective on this because I'm Russian. Here, regular conservative people and many right-wingers tend to have a far less hostile opinion towards the Soviet Union than liberals and rich people in general. So much so that there is no point in convincing them. They're either fully accepting of socialism as a perfectly good system or they start ranting about the jews, or they can do both. There's no point in convincing liberals either. What does make sense is talking to normal people who didn't really think about it hard before. But, uh, you need to go outside to do so and have relations based on trust to do that.
It's just enjoyable to have debates. I don't really intend to convince people here at any point, it's just fun. It's not even really political since I am not contributing to any actual movement by shitposting.
There is also a serious reason. Political labels don't map neatly on what actually matters, your class position and the amount of class consciousness you have. Or anything other than aesthetics for that matter. Many woke people are seething with hatred at the concept of a Palestinian existing, or the concept of anyone not bending the knee to the empire ever, or they're entrepreneurs. Life is complex.
American conservatives are very weird to me as an outsider, the most evil person I could really imagine growing up would definitely be an American democrat because the idea that a whole half of the political spectrum could be dedicated to people who screech about the biblical apocalypse and jesus christ was not something that even crossed my mind. It still feels like a meme and it's still funny.
What tends to match with what matters is your relation to capital. The ownership is absolutely the most important part, but working in certain places also tends to have a big impact on your politics because you "have to be respectable" and also because you socialize with certain groups of people.

>>2808547
Okay, so what does leftists “using Christianity” to win over Bible Belters look like concretely?

>>2808547
sabo i don't know why you advocate it, because it literally never works and instead introduces ancient, backwards ideas into socialism or communism every time, there is no meaningful gain in dishonestly appealing to imagined socialist or communist traits in christianity

>>2808554
It simply means phrasing socialist ideals in Christian terms and appealing to Christian values as articulated by Jesus, since these are naturally compatible with socialism.
>>2808556
>it literally never works
That simply isn't true. The abolitionist and Civil Rights movements relied heavily on Christianity as a galvanizing force, and on the clergy as leading members of those movements. Elsewhere in the world Liberation Theology ead considered enough of a threat that right wing military juntas actively sought to stomp it out.
>there is no meaningful gain in dishonestly appealing to imagined socialist or communist traits in christianity
There is no dishonesty and those traits aren't imagined. Jesus directly advocates for a form of communism in the Bible, and socialism is the logical conclusion of Christian moral philosophy.

>>2808564
>That simply isn't true. The abolitionist and Civil Rights movements relied heavily on Christianity as a galvanizing force
because christianity was a major political force, now it is decaying
>and on the clergy as leading members of those movements. Elsewhere in the world Liberation Theology ead considered enough of a threat that right wing military juntas actively sought to stomp it out.
and they succeeded, if an ideology was so easy to practically render dead with 1 or 2 exceptions, why should we attempt to just do it again?
>There is no dishonesty and those traits aren't imagined. Jesus directly advocates for a form of communism in the Bible, and socialism is the logical conclusion of Christian moral philosophy.
lol, the dishonesty is pretending that this is communism or socialism, it isn't, it's a utopian ideal that doesn't actually abolish class society or mean anything, you can look in the book of matthew for this and you'll find it, but in the other books of the bible it's a tertiary goal at best, since very few early christian besides the matthean authors actually cared about it, and what political continuity does it have today? liberation theology which undeniably failed, was systematically easy to crush due to having a large authority to simply declare it heretical if they chose to, again, what value does this hold?

>>2807142
Converting to anarchism? Are you fucking kidding? Wtf is happening today shittiest content ever

and also, if these beliefs were "naturally compatible", then why do most of them simply develop into at best a modern form of social democracy, and more historically average, a conservative, corporatist welfare state, or just naked abuse of the proletariat?

>>2808571
Get back to work.

>>2808571
true also, but they'll call me a bernsteinite for that

>>2808566
>because christianity was a major political force, now it is decaying
Christianity is still obviously a major political force, as a single look at US politics will tell you. I'm not saying that socialists should all become Christians, simply that we should make room in our movement for Christian socialism.
>if an ideology was so easy to practically render dead with 1 or 2 exceptions, why should we attempt to just do it again?
You mean like what happened to socialism?
>since very few early christian besides the matthean authors actually cared about it
I don't see how that's an argument against it. The call for collective ownership of property and distribution according to need is in the Bible, its how the earliest Christians lived according to the gospel. That later Christians sought to ignore it is irrelevant. Christians are a lot more likely to become socialists if they believe that their is no contradiction between their faith and socialist politics, which is easy because there isn't one.
>liberation theology which undeniably failed, was systematically easy to crush due to having a large authority to simply declare it heretical
That's really only applicable to Catholics, and that's an ironic example considering that Liberation Theology has clearly made major inroads into the Church hierarchy since Francais became pope.
>>2808570
>then why do most of them simply develop into at best a modern form of social democracy
Marxism has done this too though. The entire movement of social democracy emerged from Marxism before being recaptured by the bourgeoisie.

>>2808583
>The entire movement of social democracy emerged from Marxism
<what were the bourgeois socialists
VWobbly really is the worst pseud flagfag this community has ever seen
No other can compete with confusing and misleading new posters so consistently and for so long

>>2808511
Has anyone ever noticed that the most common argument against atheism online is
>atheists are smug and made fun of me :(

>>2808547
>>2808564
In Tsarist Russia, Christianity had a significantly stronger grasp on working class culture than it does in the modern United States. But did the Bolsheviks resort to religious tailism? Fuck no; they fought Christianity at every turn. Why? Because it is incompatible with dialectical materialism, and in a world where we have discovered dialectical materialism, it is an objectively reactionary force that encourages people to sit back an accept worsening material conditions with the promise of an eternal afterlife.

The reason we have a vanguardism (one of the many reasons) is that the popularity of a sentiment among the working class has no bearing on its actual correctness. Most members of the working class are uneducated, and have absorbed most of their ideology from the bourgeois media surrounding them. Our goal is to educate them so that they have the correct line of thought, not to indulge their bourgeois programming. Obviously you need to speak to people at their level, but this is not the same as diluting your ideology to make it look more appealing to them.

>>2808591
<what were the bourgeois socialists
That's not where modern social democracy comes from. It comes out of the split between pro and anti-war Marxists in 1914, and then is solidified when the former committed themselves to a reformist path to socialism in 1918. The SPD considered itself a Marxist party until the 1950s.

>>2808593
They realized militant atheism was a mistake early on

>the us is filled with right wing politics
<why would anyone be interested in converting right wing people?
It's all we got

It called People United Front. The only way zioleftists can win is to pander to zioeuroamericans. Like Communist Party of Israel. You have to call Hamas rapists to win votes so you can stop genocide. Like CPUSA support platner

>>2808596
Not really. Despite what some people would like you to believe, the Soviet Union was never particularly nice to religion. There were definitely points where they eased up on it, but it was, at best, begrudgingly tolerated.

>>2808593
>But did the Bolsheviks resort to religious tailism?
It's not tailsm to adapt your rhetoric and propaganda to the cultural environment in which you're operating.
>Fuck no; they fought Christianity at every turn.
Which was a huge mistake and completely failed to eliminate religious sentiment. All it accomplished was creating an insurmountable rift between Christianity and socialism, which forced people to choose between the two. The anti-theism of the Bolsheviks directly harmed them as a movement.
>it is an objectively reactionary force that encourages people to sit back an accept worsening material conditions with the promise of an eternal afterlife
This is proven wrong by numerous historical examples. John Brown and many others like him were inspired by their faith to take up arms against slavery. The True Levellers did the same thing during the English Revolution, Wat Tyler's peasant uprising in the middle ages, MLK in the Civil Rights movement, etc. A passive form of Christianity is a particular interpretation, but it's very obviously not the only one.
>but this is not the same as diluting your ideology to make it look more appealing to them
There's no dilution involved here. It's simply a question of pointing out to people that much of what they already value and hold dear points logically and inexorably to socialism.

>>2808583
>Marxism has done this too though. The entire movement of social democracy emerged from Marxism before being recaptured by the bourgeoisie.
i'm referring to modern social democracy
>That's really only applicable to Catholics, and that's an ironic example considering that Liberation Theology has clearly made major inroads into the Church hierarchy since Francais became pope.
more or less a liberal version, but i suppose so
>That later Christians sought to ignore it is irrelevant
it's actually quite relevant because of the fact those "later christians" emerged within at most a generation, likewise the earliest christians from what evidence we have precisely didn't live in that, instead lived in communities that were afforded only because of the fact that most members were roman freedmen or citizens

>>2808605
To be honest I'm pretty sure sociologists have found that Religion is objectively a stronger force at keeping intentional communities together than secular philosophy. Can't remember the exact study but they were looking at communes I believe and they found basically the religious ones were the only ones that could survive for years; everything else eventually petered out.

You kind of see this with the Mennonites/Amish communities out here. Like I think the return rate for Amish people who have their period of "going out into the world" is something like 90%?

>>2808605
>All it accomplished was creating an insurmountable rift between Christianity and socialism, which forced people to choose between the two.
The Christians already did this, the Orthodox Church was in bed with Tsardom and wholly loyal to it. Even the celebrated Georgy Gapon was a Tsarist agent.

>>2808605
>Which was a huge mistake and completely failed to eliminate religious sentiment. All it accomplished was creating an insurmountable rift between Christianity and socialism, which forced people to choose between the two. The anti-theism of the Bolsheviks directly harmed them as a movement.
the mistake was pushing it as hard as they did, but not the idea of a totally secular state that otherwise opposed religion

>>2808571
The state of Communism is actually fine. You are doomer. You are fascist. Sate of imperialism on other hand is collapsing. Imperialism is dying. Communism is living and growing. You are imperialist. You are wrong.

>>2808619
Trvke

>>2807142
>What exactly explains the (American) left's obsession with trying to "convert" right-wingers to the left?
The only people who are actively trying to convert right wingers are ACP/Hazite morons, who are at the end of the day are just confused fascists. Meanwhile everyone else has concluded that 99.9999999% of American conservatives are a lost cause.

>>2808614
Correct. Christianity is imperialism. Christianity ia oppression and exploitation. Christian pistaco cut fat off native body to feed their lamps.

>>2808630
Not true. Platner converted three time trump voter to the left

>>2808547
Jesus Christ was a capitalist.

https://fee.org/articles/42-jesus-christ-was-a-progressive-because-he-advocated-income-redistribution-to-help-the-poor/

>>2808605
>All it accomplished was
Massive scientific and technological activities that would have been greatly hampered in an environment lead by the retarded superstitions of backwards religions institutions.

>an insurmountable rift between Christianity and socialism
As >>2808614 pointed out, the rift already existed.

>This is proven wrong by numerous historical examples
Almost all of those examples were before Marxism had been articulated, and their achievements were in the progression to capitalism and its higher stages, not socialism. Christianity was a historically progressive force prior to the discovery of dialectical materialism. In a modern context, it is reactionary.

>There's no dilution involved here
Religious "Marxism" rejects dialectical materialism and is thus, obviously, revisionist. RAFB.

>>2808564
>simply means phrasing socialist ideals in Christian terms and appealing to Christian values as articulated by Jesus, since these are naturally compatible with socialism.

Such as? Repeat the “eye of a needle” quote as nauseun? Talk about the Book of Acts? What?

>>2808638
jesus was a capitalist which is good bc thats very progressive for his time

Please respond to this.

>>2808695
Probably something like the slave Bible where they removed 90 percent of the old testament and 60 percent of the New testament.
Think "Quotations from Chairman Christ" or something like that

>>2808639
>Religious "Marxism" rejects dialectical materialism and is thus, obviously, revisionist. RAFB.

Why does dialectical materialism keep getting its ass kicked by people believing in spooks like the nation or religion? Like it doesn’t seem able to actually outwit them but it’s just assumed to be the best thing ever and any move away from it is bad.

>>2808771
China seems to be doing pretty well for themselves, why not ask them?

>>2808772
There are people on this board that’d say China is revisionist

>>2808771
When the dominant superstructure is controlled by Christian bourgeoisie, this is what you get. A failing of Christianity and a schism between old and the retarded.

>>2808776 (me)
forgor sauce
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/int-hist.htm

>>2808776
Does this have anything to do with whether diamat is useful though?

>>2808783
That’s a neat quote but my point is a bunch of people claiming to be informed by dialectical materialism disagree on some fundamental things: whether China is socialist, where the USSR went wrong, when the revolution will happen.

Like Lenin thought there would be a global revolution following the USSR: he was wrong. Doesn’t seem like anyone in the USSR thought its own government would try to destroy itself. The Italian communists lost to a former socialist but the German communists lost to a guy who didn’t even read.

Seems like it’s just a post-hoc justification; like a guy claiming he won some bet cause God was on his side. If you’re right it’s cause your dialectical materialism is better if you lose it’s cause you weren’t thinking diamat enough

>>2808788
Dialectical materialism on its own doesn't prove anything. But it is the necessary philosophical framework for a proper understanding Marxian historiography, economics, and sociology as intended by Marx and Engels, with any non DiMat interpretation of Marxism inevitably decaying into revisionist nonsense.

>>2808819
But if anti revisionists still get outplayed by people who don’t even attempt to obey a Marxist worldview what good is it?

>>2808821
DiMat isn't an auto-win button, that's not the point of it.

>>2808831
But shouldn’t it inform good decision making? Inspire people? Do something?

Reading my posts I see I might come across as a concern troll and I’m sorry if I do, but I’m really asking here. Cause if a movement without DiaMat can outmaneuver one with it then it seems like the focus should be on trying to come up with novel strategies then making sure they’re not being revisionists

>>2808837
That's where Lenin was correct. Instead of resting in bourgeois parliament like the other so called "Marxists", he seized power and began socializing the capitalism existing in USSR.
Just because you have the correct line of thinking doesn't mean people with guns won't shoot you.

>>2808411
>There is no logical reason why leftists should pander to Christianity. We’re always going to be out-pandered by the right anyway.
>>2808605
>much of what they already value and hold dear points logically and inexorably to socialism
>>2808616
>the idea of a totally secular state that otherwise opposed religion
Andrei Sinyavsky aka Abram Tertz: "we should have said that when Stalin died he ascended into heaven to watch over us lol…lmao 😏"
https://filosofia.dickinson.edu/encyclopedia/sinyavsky-andrei-abram-tertz/
<Sinyavsky’s book, On Socialist Realism (Chto takoe sotsialisticheskii realizm?), published in Paris in 1959, offers an original interpretation of the Soviet literary and artistic method, challenging both the official valorization of socialist realism and its skeptical reception in the West. Sinyavsky exposes the inner contradiction of the method, which attempts to join a teleological element (socialism) with a scientific one (realism). He contends that Marxism is not only teleological but borders on religion, since it formulates an ultimate goal of history and interprets all past and present events in relation to this goal.
> “The specific teleology of Marxist thought consists in leading all concepts and objects to the Purpose, referring them all to the Purpose, and defining them all through the Purpose. The history of all epochs and nations is but the history of humanity’s march toward Communism… ” (On Socialist Realism 35).
<Sinyavsky reveals that even the material base, which in Marxist philosophy determines the ideological superstructure, is inherently idealistic, since, in the words of Stalin, “the base produces the superstructure so that it can serve the base” (qtd. 35). Such a presupposition is at least quasi-religious in its congruence with the notion that God created man so that he might serve God.
<Socialist realism is logically inclined towards classicism as an aesthetic model, with its orientation toward sublime and idealistic norms of discourse. The realistic component, which is alien to socialism, introduces an involuntary element of parody into Soviet art. “It is impossible, without falling into parody, to produce a positive hero in the style of full socialist realism and yet make him into a psychological portrait. In this way, we will get neither psychology nor hero” (On Socialist Realism 90). Sinyavsky would prefer both hero and parody. He is not only sensitive enough to grasp the inherently parodic element in socialist realism, but he goes so far as to advise the self-conscious exploitation of parody as an enhancement of Soviet heroic art. He regrets that the eclectic mixture of realism and classicism that was officially promoted from the 1930s through the 1950s lacks the genuinely phantasmagoric proportions capable of transforming dull, didactic imitations of life into inspirational imitations of didacticism and teleology itself.
<For example, Sinyavsky proposes that Stalin’s death, if presented as a religious event, could have become a theme of great art, intrinsically deeply parodic.
>We could have announced on the radio that he did not die but had risen to heaven, from which he continued to watch us, in silence, no words emerging from beneath the mystic mustache. His relics would have cured men struck by paralysis or possessed by demons. And children, before going to bed, would have kneeled by the window and addressed their prayers to the cold and shining stars of the Celestial Kremlin. (On Socialist Realism 92)
<Such a transformation of socialist realism into a religious-parodic form was accomplished more than twenty years later in the Sots Art of Komar and Melamid. The titles of many of their paintings—such as Stalin and the Muses and View of the Kremlin in a Romantic Landscape (both from the series “Nostalgic Socialist Realism,” 1981-2)—suggest an implicit reference to Sinyavsky’s meta-socialist project.
<Instead of condemning socialist realism as false, demagogic, or simply bad art, as was done in the West, or praising its truthful reflection of life, as in the Soviet Union, Sinyavsky eliminates the criterion of truth altogether, reinterpreting this canon as a system of interrelated signs which may be used for artistic purposes—not because they refer to some knowable reality, but precisely because they escape it. He was among the first to formulate the principle of parody and conscious eclecticism as a new source for contemporary art, and he opened the way for a highly innovative postmodern assimilation of socialist realism, which in the 1960s was generally considered a dead-end movement both in the West and in dissident circles within the USSR.
based based based based

>>2808630
>everyone else has concluded
revolutionary struggle to sweep workers into a fungible collective ❌
reactionary narcissistic moralism ✅
The only think you enlightened leftoids are struggling with is your pants size from being lazy pigs sitting on their fat asses!!

Talking to apolitical workers or moderate leftists is fine. Talking to conservatives can be okay if they share your material interests (i.e. they're working class), but it's a poor investment of your time and energy for obvious reasons. Talking to fascists and the bourgeoisie (even petite bourgeois) is counterproductive, complete waste of time.

>>2808852
i'm sure worshipping the same guy is gonna get you real far in a country detached from it, but what do i know? i'm just an ultra!

>>2808695
Simply talk about all the obvious ways in which capitalism is completely antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. He tells his followers to care for the poor and the downtrodden, that the accumulation of wealth at the expense of others is sinful, that property should be held in common and distributed according to need, etc. In short, simply identify to them the myriad of ways in which capitalism compels and encourages people to behave in ways that are the complete opposite of Christian teachings. From there it's a small leap to point out how a socialist society would be objectively closer to the application of those teachings on a national scale.
>>2808639
>Massive scientific and technological activities that would have been greatly hampered in an environment lead by the retarded superstitions of backwards religions institutions.
And yet countries like the US which didn't engage in any crackdown on religion made similar advancements and often surpassed those of the Soviet Union. This isn't the 17th century, no mainstream Christian denomination teaches that scientific inquiry and research is a bad thing. On the contrary, some of the largest denominations (like Catholicism) actively promote it as a means to better understand God through studying creation.
>the rift already existed
The rift existed between socialism and established religious institutions. Those institutions like the Russian Orthodox Church absolutely needed to he subjugated and neutralized. However it doesn't follow from this that religion in general should be demonized. The correct course of action would be to promote schools of religious thinking which were compatible with the revolution. This is the current approach in China. If a reactionary priest tells somebody that they cannot be both a Christian and a socialist, we aren't helping our cause by confirming that and allegation and forcing Christian workers to choose between their faith and their class. We would be much better off convincing them that not only can they be both, but that their faith compels them to be a socialist.
>Religious "Marxism" rejects dialectical materialism
I see no reason why this should be the case. Dialectical materialism is simply a model to describe human socioeconomic evolution. If Christians can accept Darwinian evolution as truth (which the vast majority do) then there is no reason why they cannot accept dialectical materialism. Darwin's theory struck far harder at the core beliefs of Christianity than Marxism does, and yet most have come to accept it.

If you believe the world was immaculately concieved you are not a materialist. Simple as

>>2808837
>Reading my posts I see I might come across as a concern troll and I’m sorry if I do, but I’m really asking here
No, it's fine. And even if you were, it can still lead to an interesting discussion.

A big thing in Marxian historiography is that, while the overall direction of history is in a given direction, on a moment-to-moment basis, it can still go backwards. It took centuries worth of back and forth for capitalism to overtake feudalism, so long that feudalism still existed in Russia by the time the Russian revolution had occurred. Whether or not we actually are moving in the direction that Marx and Engels believe us to be is debatable, but that's a whole conversation unto itself.

>>2808852
I don't see what any of this has to do with anything.

>>2808877
>And yet countries like the US which didn't engage in any crackdown on religion made similar advancements and often surpassed those of the Soviet Union.
The US also has a construction that protects people from religious authority. Both countries were still, from a legal perspective, secular, so the distinction isn't quite as large as you think.

>This isn't the 17th century, no mainstream Christian denomination teaches that scientific inquiry and research is a bad thing. On the contrary, some of the largest denominations (like Catholicism) actively promote it as a means to better understand God through studying creation.
See above. And crazed Christians who want to live like it's the middle ages absolutely exist.

>Dialectical materialism is simply a model to describe human socioeconomic evolution
That's historical materialism. Dialectical materialism is Marx's philosophical outlook.