Comradeship // Freechat

western marxism is more of a school of thought, if we want to be kind to it. It transcends geographical borders - there are western marxists in the global south, trotskyists for example.

Losurdo's bottom line was that western marxism is a school of thought that has mostly had theoretical achievements, and eastern marxism is a school of thought that has mostly had practical achievements, because they are the only ones who have seized state power. (I haven't read the book yet either lmao, it's on my list. but this is what people who have read it explain it as)

So he also put the bolsheviks into that eastern marxism school. I'm sure he goes into a lot more details; even that simple differentiation leads to a whole lot of implications. One thing we can infer for example is that eastern marxism (as he put it, not sure I like the name myself lol) has to contend with the realities of running a country, and inherently gets embroiled in the global contradictions of what "running a country in the 21st century" means.

I assume he doesn't mean that eastern marxism has not made theoretical headways of its own, because they certainly have.

Not every western leftist... but always a western leftist. /s

Of course Rockhills suggested term "Compatible Leftist" is best better. It was originally invented by the CIA when they started to support and create compatible leftism. They mostly did that in imperial core countries. That's why this very real phenomenon is mostly about about western leftists.

But don't worry, periphery leftists can have there own problems with sometimes aligning with compradors. It's just a completely different material background (and also scale) that's why this distinction makes sense.

Rockhill has moved away from the term "Western left" and switched to "Compatible left." (Its better to not use geographic terms for political tendencies) He uses it more of a description of institutions and schools of thought.

The western/compatible left are happy to engage in liberation theory and critique but not action and not even solidarity of those who take action against imperialism that has a chance of success. They are "as left as they come"... without it being a threat to the status quo.

Both zizek and varoufakis have engaged in imperialist accommodation. It would be more beneficial for people to use that form critique rather than just labeling other people but most internet leftists engaged in "debates" aren't exactly careful with their words.

I can't speak to all uses of it, but the way I understand the term, it can be a way of describing somebody who is all theory and no practice, to put it one way. They can talk the talk, but when it comes to walking the walk, they're more apt to level criticisms at AES states than they are to make sacrifices and take risks toward creating one of their own.

This, in my mind, does not include everyone in the west who is lacking in practice, like it's some kind of Revolutionary Contribution Meter you have to keep full in order to speak on matters of liberation. People can have various reasons for that, some of them to do with disability or locale, that makes it abnormally difficult to participate in revolutionary organizing.

To me, it is specifically a criticism centered around people whose notion of theory is largely derived from the purity of not having had to test it against reality. Thus it's easy for them to call China revisionist or say Lenin good, Stalin bad, because they're viewing the circumstances based on what they think should have happened, rather than what were the material possibilities afforded to the people making the decisions at the time.

In this meaning, it is a facet of ultra-leftist, but it's not only that because an ultra-leftist can be elsewhere than the west. You could maybe say it is ultra-left + western chauvinism which creates the "western marxist". "Western marxist" would mean a lot more beyond insult or criticism if the west were to produce an AES state. But "western culture" in the imperial core is deeply tied up in colonization and imperialism, so it's hard to imagine a western AES state that is western in the cultural sense yet not compromised by chauvinism. It seems easier to imagine a successful western AES state as practicing eastern marxism with some tweaks for western conditions.

horrible red pen video that is also about China

What do you mean? Why ws the video horrible? Because of the western marxist thing?

I liked this interview on RevLeft.

https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9961907/7400808