Is improving the living standards of the working class not the main goal of Marxists? I don’t see how wanting conditions to be better is some great sin. It’s not like you can’t both work toward revolution and uplift the working class at the same time.

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The main goal of marxists is overthrowing the ruling class and establishing a DotP, not concesions, especially in the imperial core since these come at the expense of the rest of the world and the imperial core working class has proven to be irrelevant so far.

[–] ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I said nothing about concessions. Also the overthrow of the capitalist system is not the main focus of marxists. It is a primary goal, but only in service of creating a societal formation for the betterment of the working class through a DotP how you mentioned.

Without the focus on the working class, any revolutionary movement is soulless at best, and opportunists thirsting for power at worst.

Declaring a working class irrelevant and therefore fit to suffer is genuinely disgusting. Those are people too, equally as valuable as the working class of any nation. The third world is getting exploited whether a poor family of four in Missouri has healthcare or not, it’s just those profits are sequestered and hoarded by imperial entities.

Yes, focusing on concessions is a death kneel for any Marxist movement and not good, but that doesn’t mean throwing the baby out with the bath water is the way to go. How else do you plan to create popular support for a movement or galvanize your movements members if the messaging is, “Fuck you guys, we don’t care about you. We only care about overthrowing the government… wait why won’t you guys support us?!”

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 8 points 2 months ago

Declaring a working class irrelevant and therefore fit to suffer is genuinely disgusting. Those are people too, equally as valuable as the working class of any nation. The third world is getting exploited whether a poor family of four in Missouri has healthcare or not, it’s just those profits are sequestered and hoarded by imperial entities.

I simply cannot agree with this, the imperial core working class is fundamentally different from the rest of the worlds, the class struggle at play is very different when on global scale one of these countries is oppressing others. The working class of these countries have been historically the most ferocious supporters of settler colonialism and continue to be the boots on the ground of current imperialism.

Class Struggle by Domenico losurdo, Chapter 5 and 6, specifically, delve into these intricacies.

[–] SweetLava@hexbear.net 6 points 2 months ago (2 children)

i'm not sure if we can apply this logic - we tried working within the confines of regimes such as the United States, Nazi Germany, West Germany, and Israel for many years, if not decades.

even when these movements were Marxist, they failed or denigrated into American chauvinism/nationalism, Strasserism and National Bolshevism, petit-bourgeois idealism, and Labor Zionism - respective to the list, in that order.

that's not to say we don't care, but previous orgs had material basis for their success.

The Black Panthers (+ BLA), Brown Berets, Young Lords, American Indian Movement were leading the struggle - it was through their collective struggle that they were able to assist the Young Patriots and the student groups to form the correct line and analysis

I, for one, am not interested in treating Donald Trump like some political outsider, as if I can take the 'America' and leave the Trump; take the 'Nazi Germany' and leave the Hitler; take the 'Israel' and leave the Netanyahu

this isn't just about 'overthrowing the government' - the program of the Communist party is not coupist - and we aren't populists, either

[–] bennieandthez@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 2 months ago

this isn’t just about ‘overthrowing the government’ - the program of the Communist party is not coupist - and we aren’t populists, either

If imperial core "communists" do not strive for overthrowing the imperialist state and turn it on its head, they are not communists but social imperialists heck might aswell join the democratic party. How will global south people take them seriously?

[–] amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 months ago

Well the thing is, wanting the US project to continue and wanting people to not die from lack of healthcare aren't the same thing, even if they can and do intersect at times in people who cling to the US concept as some kind of bastion of "freedom", whether because they're chauvinists or naive. Getting universal healthcare to happen at all in the US, within the US system, seems it will require a significant amount of strength in, and pressure from, the working class. I'm not sure it would happen at all at this stage, without some kind of major electoral win in a genuinely working class party; and if that was achieved, it would mean there is at the very least some kind of strengthened reform movement that likely has some communist cadres supporting it, if not directly involved. Right now, it's sort of just the red and blue corporations swapping turns on who screws people over.

I guess what I'm getting at is, at least in the context of the US, I'm not sure significant reform is even possible without having a much better organized working class. And if the working class is much better organized, that means it's much more feasible to galvanize them in general. This would not necessarily be the same situation as if the US were to have had universal healthcare for decades and had made the working class mostly toothless at some point after amid the full bore Red Scare, while slowly eating away at the healthcare system (my rough understanding is that's more how it is in some of the european capitalist countries).