Ask Lemmygrad

You don't critically support reactionary people, governments or organizations. You critically support their actions when they align with the goal of communism. Critical support for Russia and Putin for killing neo-nazis and destroying weapons stockpiles of the imperialist nations. Critical support for Hitler... when he blew his own brains out.

You should reframe this question looking at it with a more materialist perspective. You cannot analyze something like this in a vacuum without context. The point at which critical support is or is not justifiable depends on the circumstances.

Critical support is not about some sort of net moral value that you assign to someone, like counting up the good and subtracting the bad from it and seeing if that is above or below some critical threshold for support. That sort of moral arithmetic is un-Marxist and not dialectical.

Critical support is about the function that something serves in the broader context of a given struggle. It is about understanding and identifying primary and secondary contradictions.

But the bigger problem with this question is that it's sort of a moot point, because if a regime is that reactionary and fascistic that it has zero redeemable elements, then, in the post-WW2 world of unipolar imperial hegemony that we live in, it will be aligned with western imperialism and not against it.

Western imperialism has always and continues to deliberately cultivate and seek out the most reactionary elements in any society to prop up. Whether as open allies as they did with the military dictatorships during the cold war, or whether it is with neo-fascist, sectarian and terrorist proxies like they are currently doing in Ukraine, Syria, and so many other places around the world.

Capitalism and imperialism require reactionary regimes in the periphery to divide, oppress and crush colonized populations, even as they pretend and put on the liberal mask (as they have needed to do since the October Revolution) at home in the imperial core. This is not a moral choice, it is an inevitable consequence of the material requirements of global imperialist exploitation and extraction of super-profits.

Even in the case of former imperialist proxies and puppets which have outlived their purpose and which the empire has decided to ditch, such as Saddam Hussein, the question isn't "how intrinsically bad are they?" it's "what is their current function in the global system of imperialism?".

A regime can remain exactly the same but if the circumstances change then so might a materialist assessment of their role in the broader global context. Should communists have supported Saddam's regime when he waged war against Iran on behalf of the US? No. Should communists have opposed the US sanctions and eventual regime change war against Iraq? Yes.

Why? Clearly his regime didn't become any less reactionary from one decade to the next. But its position in the world imperialist system fundamentally changed!

On the flip side you have Al Qaeda, also a creation of the empire, also a proxy which the US eventually turned against...at least formally. Should communists support them? Obviously not.

Not just because of who they are but because even though they claim to oppose the US and the US claims to oppose them, they still fundamentally serve to further the goals of US imperialism and Zionism in West Asia, as we have seen painfully in Syria.

The answer to your question therefore depends on context and there is no blanket answer that can be given since each situation requires its own proper analysis. And not just in relation to US imperialism, which is only one facet, but in relation to the broader goals of the progressive and communist movement.

Does a regime or faction help or hinder those goals? And how do local and global goals align or conflict with each other? What is the biggest obstacle to progress? What is the primary contradiction and what is secondary?

As you can see this gets quite complex and it is best to approach things on a case by case basis. Even then communists will sometimes disagree with each other on the answers to these questions.

What does negatives outweigh the positives mean??? The american empire rules the world, not russia or iran. America is the ONLY nation capable of launching across ocean invasions, making anti-capitalist acts almost never without military retribution. Which act benefits socialist more, Russia destroying military hardware of the west? Or the American Empire expanding into russia and building military bases in the amur?

I believe the same logic which Stalin applies in "Foundations of Leninism" to the national question also applies to your question:

"This is the position in regard to the question of particular national movements, of the possible reactionary character of these movements--if, of course, they are appraised not from the formal point of view, not from the point of view of abstract rights, but concretely, from the point of view of the interests of the revolutionary movement.

The same must be said of the revolutionary character of national movements in general. The unquestionably revolutionary character of the vast majority of national movements is as relative and peculiar as is the possible revolutionary character of certain particular national movements.

The revolutionary character of a national movement under the conditions of imperialist oppression does not necessarily presuppose the existence of proletarian elements in the movement, the existence of a revolutionary or a republican programme of the movement, the existence of a democratic basis of the movement.

The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism; whereas the struggle waged by such "desperate" democrats and "Socialists," "revolutionaries" and republicans as, for example, Kerensky and Tsereteli, Renaudel and Scheidemann, Chernov and Dan, Henderson and Clynes, during the imperialist war was a reactionary struggle, for its results was the embellishment, the strengthening, the victory, of imperialism.

For the same reasons, the struggle that the Egyptian merchants and bourgeois intellectuals are waging for the independence of Egypt is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the bourgeois origin and bourgeois title of the leaders of Egyptian national movement, despite the fact that they are opposed to socialism; whereas the struggle that the British "Labour" Government is waging to preserve Egypt's dependent position is for the same reason a reactionary struggle, despite the proletarian origin and the proletarian title of the members of the government, despite the fact that they are "for" socialism.

There is no need to mention the national movement in other, larger, colonial and dependent countries, such as India and China, every step of which along the road to liberation, even if it runs counter to the demands of formal democracy, is a steam-hammer blow at imperialism, i.e., is undoubtedly a revolutionary step.

Lenin was right in saying that the national movement of the oppressed countries should be appraised not from the point of view of formal democracy, but from the point of view of the actual results, as shown by the general balance sheet of the struggle against imperialism, that is to say, "not in isolation, but on a world scale"."

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm

You can see here the same dialectical logic which i tried, in my own clumsy way, to explain in my other comment. It is not about what something is but about the role that it plays in the context of the struggle that you align yourself with. In the very first paragraph he makes it clear that function is what matters and not form. Also note the use of the terms "relative and peculiar" (peculiar not in the sense of "strange" but meaning here "unique" or "particular").

A regime with comparatively more reactionary elements can, depending on the circumstances, serve a more progressive global role than one with more seemingly progressive elements ("formal democracy") but which has aligned itself with the biggest force of global reaction: empire.

When they are puppets of usa. For example, when germany's pipeline got bombed by usa, we didn't support germany.