| Francis Hunger on Mon, 11 Jan 2021 20:33:36 +0100 (CET) |
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| Re: <nettime> The Left Needs a New Strategy |
Dmytri, I'm surprised by the arrogant and insulting tone of your mail.There has been a long line of Marxist critique which acknowledges the atrocities of Stalinism and questions the state fixation of the traditional reading of Marxism, while still being able to deliver a notion of non-capitalist futures. Namely Moishe Postone, Michael Heinrich and Bini Adamczak, to name only a few.
Plenty of material from which Franks' position could be critiqued, yet certainly not through toxic male dominance gestures like yours.
best Francis Am 11.01.21 um 16:55 schrieb Dmytri Kleiner:
Frank, honestly, and with all due respect, it is your take that is boring beyond words.It is, word-for-word, the one that is propagated by the imperialist institutions that play the embedded left like a fiddle, it is so boring it could well have been written by a twitter ebooks bot, and it can found verbatum in almost every underbelly comments section on the web. And it's not only boring, but it's a total dead-end that leads only to irrelevance and failure.Seriously, blah blah, I lived in east Germany, blah blah, imperialism and racism, blah blah, both sides, blah blah Xi-Fans. This is plainly disrespectful and bad faith intellectual gymnastics performed to denounce and deny the accomplishments of the global left and ignores the fact that any government should be obviously be judged by the outcomes it delivers, not by any third party evaluation based on doctrinaire idealism, faux-journalistic sleuthing and entitled, judgemental cherry-picking.I'm not here to argue, I understand that almost none of us in the imperial core will actually join the global left, even when we would want to, we are resident here and this limits our ability to be involved.We must keep in mind the global left does not need us or really care what we think about them, and we have no right to judge them, at best, we can heed the words of Liebknect, Der Hauptfeind steht im eigenen Land, and focus on how you can help the local oppressed while confronting the foreign aggression of your own country and its allies.Freire and McAlevey explain best why the "both sides" take is so boring, as already explained, we when moan "blah blah both sides" it means we are a third party, not part of either side, and therefor we are at best irrelevant, and at worst an instrument of the oppressors.As for the "if you like China so much why don't you marry it" level comment -- "I suggest the Xi-fans who find that attractive go live in one of their dream countries for a bit" -- I mean, besides being a reactionary drunk uncle type cliche, this is clearly backwards and confused.It is those that critique the Chinese Communist Party that should go live there, if they truly care about the laundry list of of regurgitated issues they claim to care about, then they should be involved in solving them by struggling along with the Chinese workers who alone have the insight and the stake to understand what needs to be done and the agency to do something about it.If we are not involved, if we have no insight and no stake, then what is the point of our denouncements and critiques? What purpose can they serve as third party? Well, none. Only the oppressed can liberate themselves. This needs to be the core idea of any left strategy. "Nothing about us without us" is an excellent way to understand struggles.Meanwhile, the reverse is plainly the morally and intellectually superior position: As I am not working shoulder-to-shoulder with the Chinese workers, I therefore have no insight and no stake into their affairs, I should therefore not judge them, and not denounce or deny their accomplishments, but should trust them to continue their struggle and defer to their leadership when it comes to their affairs.If I am not working with the movements that are making a difference, then I am also in no position to chart a "New Strategy" for the left.Meanwhile, the global left is winning, despite losses and sacrifice, despite us and despite the aggression of our countries.If we want to work out strategies, we first need to join a side, there is no role for random, powerless, disconnected self-entitled judges of "both sides" that leads anywhere but defeat.Best, On 2021-01-11 13:59, Frank Rieger wrote:On 10. Jan 2021, at 22:56, Dmytri Kleiner <dk@telekommunisten.net> wrote:Meanwhile, the “old left” we made fun of, the “authoritarian” and “out of date” mostly brown and yellow “Tankies” of the world, like the Communist Parties of China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, the “pink tide” in Latin America, Marxist movements like MAS, MST, NUMSA, etc, have made incredible progress for humanity. Progress that is measurable, undeniable, and desperately needed.Its the 70s all over in the confused left, now with Xi-fanboys and Dengists instead of Maoists. How boring. Having lived in East Germany (where we lived at the pinnacle of socio-economic progress in the countries aspiring to achieve socialim) I have learned one thing: any movement and government has to be judged by the means by which it tries to achieve progress. Suppression and criminalization of "divergent" art, relationships, thought and publishing being justified with the greater goal: I had that already in my life. So I suggest the (mostly US-american) Xi-fans who find that attractive go live in one of their dream countries for a bit. I for one came to the conclusion that the "oh my, the few million undesireables that did not make it through the land reform are not that important in the long term..."-ideology is not left and will not lead to a better life for the oppressed. China is just another imperialist racist state that happens to be the enemy of the other large imperialist racist state, the US. I can understand the need for a shining beacon of hope for the left. China & Co. are not it. Thanks & Greetings from Berlin, Frank # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
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