cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2331989
I don’t really think he knows this site’s culture at all. No one is dissuading people from reading theory lol
Yey or ney for him?
As someone said in the post
As far as I can tell, he's a guy who spends all his time posting about how all leftists do is post.
~~And this ain't the first time, Roderick's a bit terminally online, arguing against other progressives like JT (Second Thought) and Michael Hudson....~~
Edit:
Ok I've made a right-deviationist mistake in saying that Michael Hudson is a progressive, and indirectly agreeing with the views of the former....
I've not investigated into JT's MMT videos nor looked carefully into Hudson (I thought he was also against capitalism, turns out, only finance and feudalism..., just cares for industrial capitalism)
I think he expects too much from what at its foundation is a link aggregation website.
What he expects is for the western left to take itself more seriously if it's to have any success at all, and dodging critique by hiding behind "it's a site for memes" isn't doing any good to anyone that actually wants change.
Not "expecting too much" from a link aggregation site is like not expecting too much from any western communists. The masses are online and online spaces are not separated from "real" life like that. No one is saying we can't have any fun, but at the end of the day If we don't take ourselves seriously why should anyone else take us seriously.
While I do find lemmygrad a bit better than hexbear in regards to this, it also still has an abundance of low effort meme posts and a lack of serious discussion.
Could it be that the western left prefers spending more time socializing online than seriously undertaking the construction of revolution because of their inherent foundation in a labor aristocracy which benefits more from imperialism and neo-colonialism than it has to gain from destroying capitalism? With most people so socially alienated in the west, coupled with having limited capacity outside of productive and reproductive labor, it isn't hard to imagine that westerners would default to commiserating on the internet over using any free time they have to study, be of service to the masses, and improve themselves. For the west, shit posting on the toilet is much easier than looking in a mirror.
In today's world, socializing online is not some distinct separate thing, it's an integral part of daily life for basically everyone.
Yes, the western masses benefit from imperialism, but they are also exploited and it's the communists job to successfully link the struggles against this exploitation with wider anti-imperialist struggles in the Third World.
It is easier to just sit idly in the status quo, but do you find that to be an acceptable level for communists to be at? We're not talking about the masses in general here, we're talking about self-identified communist spaces. I want and expect more from them, and a critique of their current errors is a first step to changing them.
Personally I don't think it's worth spending the limited energy one has to improve self-identified communist spaces and try to make them more rigorous over trying to organize the masses. Only one of those groups has actual revolutionary potential, and it's not the self-identified online western communists.