this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2023
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Leftist Infighting: A community dedicated to allowing leftists to vent their frustrations
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The purpose of this community is sort of a "work out your frustrations by letting it all out" where different leftist tendencies can vent their frustrations with one another and more assertively and directly challenge one another. Hostility is allowed, but any racist, fascist, or reactionary crap wont be tolerated, nor will explicit threats.
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"Reducing racism to ethnic relations and minority needs it to completely ignore racism entirely."
I am not reducing racism I understand as you should that when the relations to the means of production advance, the social relations which maintained the previous mode of production will be shed as the new relations necessitate equality (all share the same class), and so the physical reason for racism to exist has been purged. This is the elimination of racism. What remains are capitalist pre-conditioning which must be combated via education, socialization, and solidarity.
"Race"s do have unique needs, as do sexes and genders. An ethnic minority who has been the victim of racism requires justice, requires a remedy for this injustice on a systemic level, requires protection and expansion of their ethnic cultures which were oppressed and mocked under white supremacy. Just as women require the remedy for sexism, and trans people require social justice and healthcare.
To ignore these needs is to perpetuate the same sort of cultural downfall the Soviet Union failed with and Mao aimed at solving. It is purging the superstructure of the capitalist system and creating the superstructure of the socialist system.
"The existence of municipalities in all former and current European colonies is literally the maintenance of setterism. "
This isn't the maintenence of colonialism, it is the dialectical process of development. The global south is exploited by the social democratic European nations. This is not the same system, it grew out of it and share similarities however the relations to the means of production and the mode of production are different.
"What I missed is your level of ignorance...slave relations were maintained through indentured servitude, through sharecropping, through prison slavery, and through indigenous boarding schools. Second, under Jim Crow and under much of the current legal regime, black workers were used explicitly to appease white workers, by assigning to black workers the most abusive and lowest paying jobs so that white workers wouldn’t revolt"
(proceeds to demonstrate their-own) I have already covered this in my previous reply. You are not taking in the information I am providing. You said it yourself: "black workers were used explicitly to appease white workers, by assigning to black workers the most abusive and lowest paying jobs so that white workers wouldn’t revolt" WORKERS not SLAVES. The means of production were evolved and so the economic relations evolved. I am not saying nor have I ever said that the racist social relations which originated from Slavery went away entirely, I am saying they evolved and no longer govern the process of production. They are inferior to the relations of worker and owner, not that society hasn't retained any semblance of Slavery. This is evident if you look at the overall picture of society and not solely the experiences of minorities in America who experience the effects of the remnants of these relations. It is possible for black Americans to own businesses, there are latino labor aristocrats, etc...this was not possible under Slavery. And yes I recognize the lag between abolition and the Civil Rights movement, but you must also recognize the ability for the Civil Rights movement to succeed under capitalist relations where it could not before industrialization and worker - owner relations developed within the late old system. So again, what are you missing here?
"Calling national liberation of black and brown peoples “fascism” is the most reactionary take I’ve seen from someone who considers themselves a communist. This is usually a position I see from white supremacists. You are woefully on the wrong side of history, comrade."
A strawman..I expect this from Reddit liberals not here.
"The System of Racism created racist people. The System of Racism was created by the bourgeoisie to implement class warfare and extraction of surplus value." That's capitalism you're describing and calling it "The System of Racism". Are you referring to apartheid, a divide and conquer technique leveraging PRE-EXISTING social relations and the new advent of the middle class to maintain power (a form of superstructure OF CAPITALISM)?
"Racism and Slavery and Production INTERPERMEATE. You cannot abolish capitalism and then demand racial reckoning take a back seat on the theory that eventually racism will go away. In order to abolish capitalism you must ALSO abolish the System of Racism, and when black and indigenous MLs write about this, that means national self-determination inline with Lenin’s theory."
Read several paragraphs up. As for the line of national self-determination I agree and this is not contradictory. America and the native tribes are already separate though interconnected countries. America is of land stolen from the latter yes but it is a distinctly separate country as are the native territories despite the capitalist system not respecting them. We can and should talk about changing the size of these nations to be more just but to pretend America isn't a country (in fact) and to conflate it with it not being a country (in terms of historical lineage and of course justice) is idealist. America, the country with the capitalist mode of production and relations, exists today. It should no longer exist and we work towards this goal but to say "it's simply land stolen" is to ignore socialism and aim for communism as the anarchists do. It ignores a vital step of addressing the physical issue of the resolution of that state known as America. And in this resolution, the nation of America must determine it's future as well. One cannot simply ignore the existence of America and the people (workers) who live in it for historical justicial needs of the native territories. And do not conflate this with "you see, the whites will revolt", I never said we would have to choose to maintain America, in fact I have brought forth several arguments as to why I believe the two nations will merge and the cultural roots of the former could be migrated into the new nation (akin to handing the new nation to the natives), however the natives are not currently in a state where they are able to govern a socialist country but they can be.
I see what you are saying I believe, a nation is not a race and so it is not liberalism to advocate they govern. Yes, this makes sense, we must simply train them in Marxism. Yes in the case of the natives it makes sense to advocate they lead. In the case of other minorities this is again necessary so they can ensure justice for their groups specific needs however simply excluding non-minorities from governing because they do not suffer under the modern remnants of slave relations isn't based imo. American workers who are not labor aristocrats suffer under the yoke of capitalism and no longer benefit above the rate of poverty due to their lack of suffrage under the modern remnants of slave relations.
"Racism is literally a legal system whereby throwing black people off a ship in the middle of the Atlantic was not considered murder but was instead considered destruction of property! Literally! Argued in court that legally black people aren’t people and therefore cannot be murdered! It has nothing to do with individual beliefs about people being lesser."
I have been moving forward under an understanding of this premise. I understand what racism is, I'm not a suburban labor aristocrat, I grew up and am still poor, I am white however I have seen racism first hand with friends and family. You misjudge me.
"RACISM CREATED RACISTS" Yes, but Slavery and agriculture created racism. This is what I've been trying to get you to understand. That fact and it's implications.
"They’re not minority workers. They literally constitute the global majority." I'm speaking on national terms. In America they are minorities. I believe we are speaking on America yes?
"They established completely autonomous nation-states for national populations and gave them autonomy over their nation and established the constitutional right for them to secede at any time without penalty. "
This is part of what I was referencing, I simply gave the example of the committees. We must build on the successes of previous worker states in similar situations.
"This is the most white European thing I’ve heard on Lemmy." (continues to use the term 'racial revolution' unironically)
"White people live in places explicitly because they were stolen by white people from melanated people."
I am aware of this. America developed on an injust notion of imperialism. This is why we oppose America and believe it must be destroyed. I'm not sure what notion you are going off of here comrade, I am trying to work with you but you are presenting a lot of misjudgements in regards to me despite my best efforts to demonstrate my positions to you. Much of what we are arguing about we agree on the what just not the how.
"You haven’t even managed to approach my argument, you have no standing to levy this critique."
I've rebuffed your arguments continuously, I believe I do. I have not read anything you have suggested as you continue to demonstrate a lack of fundamental understanding on Marxism. Why would I expand my knowledge outward when you have not satisfied the rudimentary? Why is that necessary if we cannot agree on the process of economic development, social relations under the means of production, or dialectics? This would be entertaining building a roof when the base has not been set.
I mean, this all that needs to be said, isn't it? There has been so much scholarship on this topic. So much written. So much conflict in the CPUSA on this topic that eventually led them to full on revisionism. And yet, you won't read Haywood, Crenshaw, Fanon, Freire, Tuck and Yang, Newton, X, because I personally haven't managed to get through your rhetorical smokescreen?
Why would you expand your knowledge? Because you claim to be a Marxist. What you demonstrate, however, is that you are a chauvinist.
This is chauvinism.
I mean, I don't know what to say anymore. I have clearly stated that racism is not what your friends and family do, that it is a super structural system, and you make noises with your rhetoric to pretend like you understand what I'm saying. And then you say this? I mean, at this point I just walk away.