(Thread here: https://nitter.fdn.fr/RodericDay/status/1666063389733298176#m) They have some decent stuff, but they are also tailist patsocs. It’s probably better to just read the Black Agenda Report article than buy the book.
Nobody is perfect
True, that’s why I think the six downvotes are funny. I imagine them saying “no, MWM is perfect!”
MWM (Eddie) and Rainer Shea are crypto patsocs. They don’t believe in Land Back and Black Liberation, they believe Settler Colonialism in the US is over and thus the decolonial movement doesn’t apply.
They are dogmatists who refuse to do any historical research of North America, and are class reductionists (who ignore that racism and colonialism are class systems in the first place).
I think this is a severe misrepresentation of their position. They have each expressed support for both of the things you claim they don’t believe in. What they have criticized are liberal versions of those ideas, that is the misuse of those slogans to advance a neoliberal agenda under the guise of radlib language.
Speaking on Rainer: He criticizes “Liberal” positions on Land Back and Black Liberation while forming unity with Libertarians (actual Liberals) on anti-Imperialism while calling Black Agenda Report’s refusal to work with that crowd “wrecker” behavior. He calls Horne and Sakai “wreckers”. Centering external facing Imperialism as the primary contradiction over internal Imperialism brings you to politics such as this.
Who’s to say these folks are “Liberals”? Do we just take Rainer’s word for it since they call out that his dead end politics are resorting to working with white supremacists?
He shows no serious attempt to advance the decolonial movement, but like MWM is more than willing to work with open PatSocs. 🤷🏾
He’s willing to work with reactionaries that are unhappy with the US Imperialism and the fact that it is taking away from working class conditions. Through this these allies are platformed as “MLs” that are Settler Nationalists, anti-Indian, anti-Black, extremely transphobic, anti-“Globalist” (🐕 😙), calling people “d*generates” and white haters. They agree with Vaush far more than any MLs.
I’ve noticed a few times that decolonial points get brought up, specifically in relation to US settlers today, the comments expressing these ideas tend to get quite a few downvotes without anyone really offering a substantive critique. I find it a bit worrying but I don’t know if it’s some external brigading or if some of the users here hold these views.
In any case, like you said, the US is very much still a white-supremacist settler state. There is a very real material basis leading to differences in interests between racial groups in the US. This kind of divide makes it very difficult if not impossible to rely on a predominantly white working class to be a revolutionary force. There’s a reason that most of the theoretical development and all the revolutionary movements in the US have been led by minorities and the conditions to change that aren’t there yet. Not even close.
spoiler
Like confused men they don’t understand that the system of oppression can hurt them while still overwhelmingly benefit them
I also want to point out that many of our comrades here who disagree with our takes on Decolonization are being good party members and holding the lines that their and many parties around the world are holding, hope in the American workers. But these parties especially the ones in the settler colonies of North America have not done the necessary investigation of their settler society and land and resource theft. Many of them are petit/semi (landed) bourgeois, educated, and through this have privileged entrance into Marxist theory, me included. We know that Lenin and the colonized comrades had an uphill battle against European Chauvinism within the international Communist movement which is what crystalized Marxism Leninism in the first place.
There is no reason to abstract internal colonization as either finished or different from external colonization, even calling it internal colonization makes it seem like the solution for the colonized Africans and indigenous nations is to absorb them into the settler nation. No, the settler states exist on stolen resources that they use to dominate the rest of the world, but its connection to wealth is here, inside its borders. It needs settlers to take land and hold it for the bourgeoisie to later expropriate. It needs settler dominated unions to build and work the environmentally extractive and damaging infrastructure that only benefits the settler masses. I posted about armed indigenous resistance (backed by the Panthers) to racist fishing enclosures in the 1960s that sparked the American Indian Movement, and that post had far less traction than this one about MWM.
American comrades, find out what tribes inhabited the places you have physical connections to. Learn how they came to no longer own that territory and why you and your people now do. You will learn far more about capitalism and America than through studying other movements, because our conditions are not the same. Apply the methodologies of MLism to the history of this continent, stop importing the solutions from others.
A disappointing thread with little substantial criticism. I expected more from Roderic Day, i always enjoyed reading his essays. This just seems to boil down to accusing MWM of associating with “patsocs”, ironically falling into the exact same purity fetish that the book criticizes. The national question in the US is highly complex and there is a good argument to be made that for revolutionary progress to be possible the US itself as it currently exists must be dismantled. But this is not a question of moral principles, rather one of strategic necessity, expediency and viability. Is it even possible to build a revolutionary movement on the basis of the “American” settler proletariat? Or conversely, is it even possible WITHOUT it? The answers to these questions will have to be borne out by practice and active revolutionary struggle, they won’t be found in theory, essays and books.
Well I mean, we have 400 years of colonization and worker’s movements already existing to study. It’s beyond the point in time to notice the most effective attacks at the US state have come from indigenous and Black nations. American Communists are overwhelmingly illiterate in how the colonized nations of North America came to be subjugated by the settler state. Nobody says the American workers can’t advance Decolonization, but centering the movement on their struggle is counter revolutionary while they are historically illiterate to the territories they inhabit. This is why pushing potential comrades away from decolonial voices is dangerous as Rainer and MWM are doing it.
I think there is plenty of substance in Roderic’s critique. You can check out the response MWM gave and some back and forth with Roderic here (scroll up for the full thing).
As for accusing MWM of associating with patsocs, no accusations are needed as they openly do associate with patsocs. They’ve had multiple friendly interactions with Hinkle and Haz both on twitter and on some streams/podcasts. These have been ongoing for at least a year now, if not longer.
I don’t think patsocs fall into the “purity question” at all because they are simply neither communists nor leftists of any sort.
I don’t think patsocs fall into the “purity question” at all because they are simply neither communists nor leftists of any sort.
I think you’re right about criticizing them doesn’t make you a purist, but I think at least some of them do believe in communism or leftism, though they are a severe right deviation, not understanding dialectics, material conditions or the character of nationalism.
though they are a severe right deviation, not understanding dialectics, material conditions or the character of nationalism.
I agree, but at some point a deviation becomes a full disconnect. I think some of the people that end up in patsoc spaces are just misguided while actually searching for an alternative to mainstream narratives, but I don’t think that applies to the leadership. I’m constantly reminded of stories of fascist movements starting out in Europe using all sorts of leftist sounding rhetoric while obviously being reactionary. A perfect example I think is Mussolini’s story.
I know you’re not saying we shouldn’t criticize (this part is not necessarily directed at you but at everyone in general), but we must criticize the patsoc positions (and ones like MWM that are either there already or seem to be on their way). How else will we ever build a proper communist movement? Marx, Lenin and all the other great communist theorists relentlessly criticized anyone that was deviating. Of course, this didn’t stop, for instance, the Bolsheviks from forming strategic alliance with e.g. the Mensheviks, but only to achieve specific political goals, and all the while still criticizing the incorrect positions held by their temporary, strategic allies.
I don’t think there’s much, if anything, to be gained from US communists allying with patsocs. Lenin talks about compromises, their nature and how to approach them (which types of compromises are beneficial and which aren’t) in ‘“Left-wing” communism, An infantile disorder’ and I think we should take that lesson a bit more seriously.
I’m also reminded of his criticisms of the Economists in ‘What is to be done?’ while talking about the need to build a genuine Marxist movement, and not to allow the class struggle to be limited only to certain areas (in that particular example, trade unionism) and that the Party should be ahead of the spontaneous class consciousness of the proletariat so it can guide it to the correct line and not chase it’s tail (tailism). The patsocs and patsoc-adjacent positions limit class struggle in the realms of settler colonialism and corresponding land-back and decolonial movements, and in a lot of cases in the realm of struggle for LGBTQ and other minority rights.
In the imperial core in general the conditions are not ripe for revolution (and I don’t think they will be for quite some time) so I think that building a proper ML party/movement should be the main goal. A movement that is ideologically “pure” if you want to call it that, but one that will be strong internally and ready to lead the revolutionary masses when the time come. Lenin talks about keeping the correct line and thus achieving actual results for the proletariat which will itself bring more people to the movement as opposed to other, deviating movements. Doing all this is of course much easier said than done but I think more effort going in that direction is sorely needed.
The main point I would like to say about this “purity” discussion is that I think it’s framed in an entirely wrong way. The material conditions simply aren’t revolutionary in the imperial core yet and we need to be thinking about long-term plans. This talk of purity in ideology is largely useless when the majority of the western working class is benefiting from imperialism. Of course they aren’t flocking to the ML line. The material conditions guide ideology, not the other way around. (sorry for the long comment)
It seems like most people especially patsocs ignore those who actually have revolutionary potential. We should be focused on organizing the colonized, the homeless, certain sections of the lumpen proletariat, and so on.
