I don't see people discussing this enough. But in my opinion this is big, and needs to be amplified.
The Chinese are by and large irreligious, and yet they are trying to send money to the Islamic Republic to the point that the embassy in Beijing had to release a statement saying basically 'thank you but we're not seeking donations at this time'.
Meanwhile western 'marxists' can't help but preface whatever they have to say about Iran with "but remember guys it's a theocratic fascistic regime". To their 10,000 twitter followers who all hail from Langley, Virginia, because that will surely change the tide.
Now, where did these netizens get the idea from that they support Iran? It doesn't come out of nowhere. People who live/have been to China will be able to say more on this and how world politics are represented in Chinese media, but we see that even as the PRC takes a step back so to speak on the world stage (at least publicly), the masses in China still know what's what. Nobody in the west wants to send money to the Islamic Republic right now, I can tell you that much (not that we could, it's illegal in most western countries.)
China is very diplomatic in how they talk. They trade with 'Israel', because they will trade with anyone (and the Chinese will be quick to point out that trading is a neutral act). And conversely, the PRC is not very public about what they do behind the scenes. During this war, we have seen Chinese satellite imagery of the strikes against US bases. What's interesting is that these were released publicly, likely as a flex to say "FYI if you were thinking of attacking us this is some of what we can do."
This has led some to speculate that China is helping Iran in some ways, but that's the thing: they're not flashy about it. The White House publicizes every strike they make because they want to strike fear in your hearts, while China works diligently at the desk. That's the difference. That's why we think everything is resolved through bombs and guns - that's just what we grew on.
When Yemen announced a blocus through the Gulf of Aden, Chinese and Russian ships were the only ones they allowed through. It has been reported that it is the same situation in Hormuz but the situation is still foggy so don't jump to conclusions too quickly. IR mission to the UN denied that Iran blocked the Strait just earlier.
Still this doesn't prevent the ever-so-righteous western communists from saying 'but China does nothing, but China is not helping'.
First of all: a- did Yemen and Iran even ask China to participate in the war? No, they did not. And b- why should China help and not you? Is it because you don't want to be on the receiving end of a bombing run? Well neither do the Chinese. So why should they die on your western word?
Frankly at this point anyone in the west that still follows the routine is not worth listening to anymore. They have become utterly irrelevant, just like that. Western marxism will not save us, it never has. It's never produced anything other than, well, nothing. If your opinions begin with "well Iran is not great but-" I don't wanna hear it. Everything that you say will be nonsense.
This goes for those highly-theoretical communists that think China is revisionist or dogmato-liberal-scato-whatever too. You have become completely irrelevant, just living in a very peculiar niche of "I think I'm helping!" but also "how come we can never rally more than 10 people who want to form a cult before exploding??"
Meanwhile the people in China know exactly what's going on. Do you think they receive top-class political education in school? No, like every other student in the world, they just coast by until the exam and then promptly forget the material. And yet they still arrive at the correct conclusion.
If you want to be a marxist in the west, become an eastern marxist. that's what 'western marxism' means: the ineffectual, CIA-approved ant mill that keeps you running in circles until you die of exhaustion.
Oh and this goes for ignorantly believing whatever western media prints about China too when it fits your preconceptions and stereotypes.
Harsh but fair.
Westerners could really do with internalizing even a little of the humility that their successful counterparts operate on. And I don't mean "I suck" kind of self-deprecating stuff. I mean more like acknowledging shortcomings in a sober way without taking it personally, without projecting the flaws as originating from some other society, without blame-shifting and finger-pointing, but actually viewing things as shared problems to solve and focusing primarily on problems we can actually do something immediately about; this isn't to say "neglect an international view" but rather, a caution for people who get caught up in judging what anti-imperialist and/or AES entities are doing internationally when they don't even have ties with them in the first place. I know there are orgs who do try to have some kind of ties and good for them, and they aren't usually the ones coming out of the woodwork to lecture in public about the inadequacies of particular anti-imperialist and/or AES entities; why would they if they're trying to build solidarity and friendship? If you have a problem with one you consider a friend or ally, do you bring it to them or go gossip to others about their shortcomings?
How can the west get anywhere if it views the only successful liberation efforts as beneath them? Something they can look down upon and judge from on high? That perspective doesn't come from better knowledge or experience, but from western imperial superiority complex.
The harsh truth is that the main thing the west is good at is colonizing and brutality. But through DARVO style reversal, it has convinced itself that somehow this brutality is "freedom" and the victims of the west's brutality are "people in need of saving from themselves." This tendency of thought does not flip off like a light switch the moment one turns their sympathies toward communism. It just changes form from the colonizer's "we have to teach them how to do society" to the ultra's "we have to teach them how to do communism". It has to be unlearned by shifting focus from lecturing at successful efforts to learning from successful efforts. We can be both teacher and pupil at times, but when it comes to how we in the west look at successful anti-imperialist and/or AES efforts, the emphasis should always be on pupil.
That's why even if Americans overthrow their government, they probably wouldn't know what to replace it with.
You have a point here. Much of US discourse about rights is enmeshed with the constitution to a degree that borders on worshipful of it. The problem there being that unless a clear-headed enough communist vanguard is heading up a hypothetical overthrow, the inclination is probably going to be "the constitution but make it live up to the spirit of it this time" while not properly grappling with the fact that the constitution was a blood-soaked document drawn up by slave-owning genocidal settlers to give rights to themselves. And it evolved, through bloodshed and strife, to eventually encompass citizens more as a whole, but is still more "liberal/bougie democracy" style "human right to be annoying" than it is anything to do with directing the state toward getting people's needs met.
USians in general need to internalize the concept of a state having a mandate to actually work for the needs of the people. I think one of the reasons people in the US have such an easy time believing the lie that AES states are "ebil communist bad mean" is because, unless they are bougie themselves and are part of the self-aware imperialist power structure (in which case they have other reasons to buy into the lie), they have virtually no experience with a state apparatus actually being there to serve their needs. Instead, their experience is with it being mostly shit and having to fight tooth and nail to get anything done. So it's easier for them to believe the rest of the world is like that too.
We must learn from wherever there is something to be learned.
I was talking to a self-proclaimed leftist (of what kind I do not know) about the DPRK and Iran the other day. They were adamant other leftists should not support the islamic republic or the DPRK, because they're "not socialist".
I said there is something to be learned from them anyway, maybe just not where you thought you'd find it. The islamic revolution succeeded in Iran - why? how? what did they do that worked? Why did people rally behind the islamic faction that won and not the communists? And yes the communists were massacred during the revolution (partly by the SAVAK), but this is the reality we face: iran is an islamic republic right now and not a socialist republic, and we just have to accept that.
Same with the Taliban in Afghanistan. How did they succeed, what did they do to win against the NATO coalition? Whether we like them or not they're in charge of Afghanistan.
'Purist' socialists, for lack of a better term, will say this is not supporting the class struggle, and therefore should not be studied. They are stuck in 1917 - for all our insistence on materialism too few people actually seem to try and look at the material conditions!
Tunnel visioning into 'socialism or nothing' is part of western marxism. They want to will a revolution into existence without playing with the cards they are dealt. We have iranian editors on prolewiki, they are communists and they are not religious. They have a lot of criticism of the iranian state, of course. but that's for them to figure out, not for me to impose or use as a cudgel against Iran. And they are well aware that right now marxism is just non-existent in Iran (though we did set up a Persian language instance of prolewiki).
Like imagine if China said "we're going to bomb Europe because you guys are not communists yet".
Herein lies the problem: it always come back to the missing, dialectical foundation of Marxism–that which served revolutionaries as the toolset to face and solve the many problems necessary to shift the balance in favor of socialism against its struggle with capitalist imperialism. They haven't learned that constant, unwavering, and consistent learning and understanding of changes and development within this world is needed in order to adapt, adjust the revolutionary program to maintain its sharp edge such that it can cut down the contradictory forces in the struggle. This includes learning from the errors of a program's application by investigating how it was implemented, what or who were the proponents for its set backs, and what were the benefits and adverse effects to the masses. This process is part of what makes Marxist theory and its application scientific.
These western Marxists desperately need to dismantle the framework of liberal idealism that demands nothing but perfect, impossible, ideal conditions, but it never brings forth a program that promotes real-world action. Ask any of these Marxists what their first step is. Anyway, I don't wish to be over critical of them, because it's by the bourgeoisie's design that they don't know how to engage in real action and programs.
We've heard "get organized, become class conscious, and, uh...", but the ideas–the spark–for going about beginning a program are always missing, and this is by far the biggest set back to Western Marxism. To liberate Western Marxism from its shackles of idealist "purity", we must investigate and get scientific method with it! Investigate everything, comrades! Ask the working class what their struggles are, work with your comrades and work with these working class folks to hypothesize real, actionable plans to resolve this struggle! The plans could have real, material benefits for those in struggle and for the revolutionary movement's credibility, so put them to the test. Account for errors, regroup and determine any previously unknown or unforseen factors and work to overcome them by adapting. It's why we have these brains, agency, and this higher-reasoning!
It is unreasonable to ask Hey, why haven't you seized the means of production yet? when it's more realistic to ask "Shall we go out to those who struggle, learn their situation, catalogue these problems, analyze and understand the material context of their situation, town, city, and formulate a plan?" What the plan can entail, well, it would require establishing connections. People are miserable, they're angry, and they may be mistrusting of strangers, but what should they make of a group of people who take the initiative to physically mobilize, and are looking for a way to help those in need? This is something most folks wouldn't see everyday. There are folks who will want to help, so they may offer some of whatever service or material resource they can provide. If a consistent connection and relationship can be established, this already is a success that gets the program closer to its goal.
Many of us are novices, and in the West, we have been largely conditioned to want to disengage from any real-world communication, against our very nature, with other people, so this contraction must be identified, understood, its existence accepted, and thought needs to be given so as to address how it may be overcome. Not doing things alone, for one, is powerful. If carrying out the duties necessary to accomplish the tasks outlined in a program seem challenging, well, they are, but that's why we collaborate with other willing comrades and community members who are willing to help. Become dependable to one another. Uphold, respect, and follow through on your duties so as to ensure that progress towards completing a program is possible. We in the West have a tremendous advantage in that we know how to do this sort of work because we are proletarian–we know how to be dependable at work, we know how to collaborate with our coworkers, we learn to carry out operations necessary to succeed in creating a product, providing a service, and so on.
These are my thoughts, comrades. I know things can be daunting, but we really need to take that initial step to finding our comrades, in the real-world. I wish it could be us, here, on Lemmygrad, but I know there are hundreds, thousands of miles, kilometers of land and sea between most of us. We avoid idealist impossibilities, so we adapt and we identify what is possible for us in each of our own real, material contexts. So, we must go out and find our comrades. They're around us, no doubt, some may not even know that they can be a tremendous help to improving others lives–they've been ensnared, watching the failure of the liberal ideals, in a panic shouting "what do we do!?". They've been in desperation for years watching the liberal idealists step aside, consistently and maliciously misidentify causes behind the unraveling of fascism, supported economic austerity for the working masses, stolen a quality of life from us so as to pamper the parasitic luxury class. And the incessant gaslighting: It's your own fault for not working harder even though the odds have been stacked against you from the start by this system!
That was supposed to be my closing paragraph (if you can even call any of the above that lol •,•), but I tend to ramble. Mostly to my wife, as I've always been a shy lad growing up and as an adult, now, I guess I just feel comfortable not saying much. But damn, I really need to change that, don't I? Well, I knew a comrade from years ago, oh, ten years, maybe? We were in jazz band in high school, but we stayed somewhat in touch well after we graduated, but, anyway, he would always ask me on Facebook "Yo, you read theory, bro?". I never knew what the hell he was on about because I wasn't a Communist, then. But I wasn't some Red Scare lunatic either, so I would just ask "what?". He shared a ton of books in some online repository, but I was an idiot and didn't really give much attention to any of it after trying to read Das Kapital and not having the aptitude and vocabulary to make sense of any of it and dropped all of it. Well, we sorta lost touch. I deleted all of my socials since the tech industry was very much becoming an apparatus of mass surveillance and snitching on folks who were even remotely dissenting of Trumpism. I came upon some videos of revolutionary, communist literature, like the Manifesto, State & Revolution, Principles of Communism, What is to be Done? especially after learning about the P2025 reactionary program, rising white nationalism and fascism. As a radlib, I was terrified. I was paranoid. I kept thinking to myself "They're gonna hunt me and my family down. They hate Mexicans so much, they're gonna come for us." But all of the revolutionary stuff was mind-blowingly revelatory. I could not believe that all of the rotten aspects of our system were precisely what Lenin outlined in State & Revolution.
I never looked back. This was last February/March. A lot of the Trotskyite, anarchist, left communist stuff had some stock to it, I found, but I never understood why they hated these "tankies" so damned much. So, I checked out actual tankie subreddits (at this point, I had gone ahead and deleted Instagram, way too much mask-off Nazi stuff on there). I was in r/TankieTheDeprogram, but I had all of my accounts nuked eventually for "fedposting" too damned much. I get a little heated sometimes and I'm very good at calming myself down, but they didn't accept that appeal lol. Anyway, so I learned about Dialectical Materialism and this was something very much foreign to me. Well, at least I thought it was until I realized it was a sort of application of the scientific method to the development of society, classes, civilizations, at large, and pretty much every other phenomenon that is in constant development in existence. I had never even questioned before how absurd it was that our forms of governance and economies were, more or less, all reliant on some materially meaningless abstracts–purely metaphysical, and I'd even say "mystical", especially in the way they (state officials, politicians, etc) act whenever they're made to face the people's real, material hardships. Everything was always so easy for them to dismiss, but whenever it came to legislation aimed at improving people's lives, they would be up and ready to kill it.
Anyway, that's a bit about me, I suppose. I tend to be more open, now. Especially when I feel like I understand things a whole lot better, now, since learning the communist, dialectical worldview. I never liked talking much, especially when I was unsure or simply didn't know about something. That's why Mao's saying No investigation? No right to speak! really, really resonated with me. Yeah, I should keep my mouth shut unless I know damned-well what I'm talking about. I'd hate to contribute to all the existing noise, nonsense, and plain falsehoods circulating in this world. Alright, comrades, I wish you all so well. Lastly, on the Western Marxist question, we know where the problems are, so we should make sure to nudge them in the right direction. A Western Marxism with a strong dialectical materialist foundation, stripped of all the idealist, reactionary nonsense that has made its Marxists nothing more than wishful bystanders, will sweep over the Western world and join its Eastern counterpart to create that Internationalist Marxist liberation front to strip the chains of oppression off of the masses and wipe the stain of capitalist imperialism from this world. I am hopeful and anxious to see humankind enter into an era of civilization where humans can be the humans they were meant to be for the very first in history.
Yes. None of us is born with the knowledge of how to build a revolution that can take the place of an existing societal power. If anything, it's the opposite. People are generally born into a power structure that is telling them that it's good and wholesome (whether it is or not), that in spite of its flaws it's making progress, and that if you work with it rather than against it, you can overcome problems. In other words, from a young age, we are often being taught how to get along with the status quo rather than fundamentally challenge it.
I emphasize this because I think it helps hit home how little many of us will know about revolution, whether a bourgeoisie one, a nationalist one, a communist one, if we don't learn from what has come before and what is still standing now. The first time I read theory, it was eye-opening because I'd simply never been exposed to those kind of perspectives before in such vivid detail.
And every time I learn about the operations of an AES project beyond the most superficial of summaries, that too is eye-opening in its own ways. As you emphasize, this extends beyond learning about communist efforts alone. Not only to understanding why various anti-imperialist, non-communist takeovers have succeeded, but also why imperialism itself succeeds; where it is weak and where it is strong. Colonialism has not brutalized the world for hundreds of years through propaganda alone. How has it lasted as long as it has? How did it morph into and sustain itself through imperialism?
It's a lot of ground to cover, but that's fine. If people have time to write long lectures about the supposed failings of this or that anti-imperialist or AES project that isn't pure enough, they have the time to learn more about how those projects came to be and how they actually operate in the day to day realities. And yes, people who actually live in one of those places, I would generally assume they're more equipped to speak on it and criticize in fair way. Though even then, I would expect them to criticize in detail and with nuance, lest they be mistaken for someone who is trying to mimic the empire's sweeping and dismissive proclamations.
Exactly! Thank you, this really needed to be said.