Lenin worked with Germany and took resources from them. Marx raised money for the Ottomans. Yes, it in fact does mean opposing your own empire by supporting its opponents (and getting supported by its opponents, in Lenin's case) and sabotaging your own empire.

Fence-sitting is passive and neutral. Revolutionary Defeatism is active and works against ones own empire (de facto supporting its opponents) by being a 5th column. Essentially it's being a reverse-comprador. Instead of being a traitor to your own nation in order to empower a foreign imperialist/colonizer coming into your country, you are supposed to be a traitor to your own imperialist nation in order to empower a foreign colony/target to remove your own empire and its proxies.

This is why one of the most essential tasks of any revolutionary party is to analyze and assess whether their own nation is imperialist or not. Not all capitalist nations are imperialist (Gaddafi being attacked by NATO/US deserves critical support, a Libyan revolutionary should not have sabotaged their own nation during war while an America/NATO resident should have).

[–] JuneFall@hexbear.net 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Lenin worked with Germany and took resources from them. Marx raised money for the Ottomans. Yes, it in fact does mean opposing your own empire by supporting its opponents (and getting supported by its opponents, in Lenin's case) and sabotaging your own empire.

The question is who you support though, and revolutionary socialists, including Lenin, didn't give money to the Tsar, Metternich, or George V. They sought out different avenues. Supporting revolutionary groups, articles, only in limited cases sabotages, some criminal acts which disturbed the military supply chains and agitation within the military.

This is a far cry from thinking it is enough to be public about critical support of governments online. The latter would be the equivalent of :vote: for anti-imperialists. The former a principled response that actually figures out what the critical means.

[–] ProxyTheAwesome@hexbear.net 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Did you read my other comment? I address this pretty clearly

I suppose it doesn't truly matter whether you "critically support" Russia or not, as an American or westerner - in that your prayers won't materially empower either side or have any outcome (as long as your still organize against support/weapons for Ukraine with the rest of the revolutionaries). However, when we are having discussions amongst ourselves what good is it to all lie and pretend like we don't want Russia to win? We do, it's in our best interests. I think a lot of westerners just aren't ready to make the final leap to a full revolutionary position…

Essentially my issue with western leftists that go around fence sitting and couching their views to liberals as neutral are being dishonest. They are either confused about who they should be supporting or they are lying about it to appeal to Liberals and not to rock the Liberal boat of western consensus. They are spreading social chauvinism instead of correct Leninist analysis of the war.

And by the way, Marx and Engels did raise money for the Ottoman Empire. However that was just one example, nowhere did I propose hexbear money drives for Russia.

[–] JuneFall@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And by the way, Marx and Engels did raise money for the Ottoman Empire.

Glad to learn, can you give me a citation for that? I didn't find anything after having searched for 15 minutes.

[–] ProxyTheAwesome@hexbear.net 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

https://neodemocracy.blogspot.com/2017/05/marx-on-ottoman-turks.html?m=1

Couldn’t find anything about the funds, although I know I have seen articles and evidence of it in the past. However, I did find excerpts from Marx that he published in the New York Tribune where he is pretty blatantly arguing against the building Russian tsarist imperialist hegemony, and showing that if the Russians continued their strategy in the Crimean War and took all of Turkey that it would become a massive hegemonic empire (which would be a setback for revolution). Thus he argues for defense of the Ottoman Empire against the Russian imperialists.

So in effect he’s reaching the same conclusion here that I was arguing, that it’s fine for revolutionaries to play empires off of each other to prevent the creation of a single hegemonic empire. In modern day, America has become what Marx feared tsarist Russia would become, the empire that is disastrous to global revolution and set it back a century. So he would argue that it’s fine to support Russia (even if it was an empire like the Turks of yore, which it no longer is) if it means preventing or weakening the global hegemon (America/the collective west) to open up avenues for revolution.