#ultraleftism

[lesbianchemicalplant]

Ni Hamás ni Netanyahu.  El pueblo de Israel pervivirá.  El pueblo de Palestina pervivirá.  Sólo necesitan darse una oportunidad y empeñarse en ella. Mientras tanto, cada guerra seguirá siendo sólo el preludio de la siguiente, más feroz, más destructiva, más inhumana. Desde las montañas del Sureste Mexicano. Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. México, octubre del 2023.

machine translation of this part to english:

Neither Hamas nor Netanyahu. The people of Israel will continue to live on. The Palestinian people will continue to live on. [They] only need to take an opportunity and grasp it. Meanwhile, every war will continue to be only the prelude to the next, more fierce, more destructive, more inhuman. From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Subcomandante Insurgente Moisés. Mexico, October 2023.

“Neither Hamas nor Netanyahu” 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪

(again, the Palestinian resistance isn't Hamas alone, they're a large part of the coalition but it's still a coalition of like 10 Palestinian orgs. but this would be no less pathetic and ridiculous a statement even if the resistance fighters were just Hamas)

[allnought]

[greyxday]

Karl Marx, The German Ideology (1846)

“In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from heaven to earth, here we ascend from earth to heaven. That is to say, we do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined, conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.”

[999-roses]

says a lot when you say "see see pee" and basically call deng revisionist scum in the same video essay. stay mad that chinese ppl arent socializing poverty for the last 4 decades i guess??

[handweavers]

trains myself to reflexively pull out my copy of lenin's left communism an infantile disorder and read highlighted passages to calm me down so i don't become a maoist whenever a white tourist in asia pisses me off

[dustedandsocial]

This essay examines the antinomy of class struggle, as formulated by Paul Mattick and elaborated by Théorie Communiste. The antinomy can be formulated as follows: while capital accumulates by exploiting wage labor, the reproduction of wage labor reproduces the conditions of exploitation that propel the accumulation of capital. Thus, in reproducing itself, wage labor reproduces the conditions of its own exploitation, which is to say, capital. This means that labor’s gains against capital—better wages and working conditions—are won at labor’s own expense: increasing wages imply an increasing rate of exploitation. Only the abolition of the capitalist class relation can abolish this vicious cycle. The question is whether this abolition requires labor’s seizure of the means of production, or whether these means have become so bound up with capital accumulation that abolishing capital entails relinquishing these means and abolishing production as we know it. Théorie Communiste insists on the latter. Since social production has become inextricable from capital accumulation and the affirmation of labor inseparable from the affirmation of capital, communism as the abolition of capital requires the self-abolition of the proletariat. Class struggle unfolds in the rift between two impossibilities: the impossibility of affirming the proletariat without affirming capital and the impossibility of negating capital without negating the proletariat. Is the possibility of communism inextricable from this rift between impossible affirmation and impossible negation? Or does it require a politics of the rift capable of pinpointing the faultline between these impossibilities?

[rgr-pop]

one thing i wouldn't have really guessed if i was only operating online but which has seem to be a pattern irl in d s a is that people seem to use "ultraleft" synonymously with "identity politics" which makes some conceptual sense but makes absolutely no sense. i feel like in the past it may have had more specifically homophobic cache but since this year (between the leak and this election) i almost exclusively heard people use it to refer to abortion related stuff. i heard men say that *having* abortions was ultraleft. i was embroiled in more than one conversation in which abortion advocacy orgs those of us abortionists already think of as being basically concessionist were accused of "ultraleftism." you have to believe me when i tell you there are dsa members calling planned parenthood ultraleft (before someone whispers in their ear that the unionizing planned parenthood techs are "ngo shills" for being pro abortion.) you HAVE to believe me. also i'm pretty sure i semi-recently saw someone post an article about moms 4 housing calling it an ultraleft nimby position but i may be hallucinating

[iqragirlhaver]

[biologusputrifier777-blog]

For all the stupid liberal and "leftist" mfers who make that insane post where they jerk off about revolution being the rapture or something

Will the peaceful abolition of private property be possible?

It would be desirable if this could happen, and the communists would certainly be the last to oppose it. Communists know only too well that all conspiracies are not only useless, but even harmful. They know all too well that revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes.

But they also see that the development of the proletariat in nearly all capitalist countries have been violently suppressed, and that in this way the opponents of communism have been working toward a revolution with all their strength. If the oppressed proletariat is finally driven to revolution, then we communists will defend the interests of the proletarians with deeds as we now defend them with words.

-Friedrich Engels: the Principles of Communism

[sapropel]

Ultraleftism... is a refusal to take into account the ways that existing political realities limit possibilities for action. Ultraleft politics confuses means and ends, muddles the distinctions among goals, strategy, and tactics. Historically, for instance, ultraleftists have dogmatically opposed participating in coalitions with liberals or mainstream politicians.

This tendency severs the idea of commitment to principle from the need to make realistic assessments of the options that exist in the fluid here-and-now; to analyze tough-mindedly our strengths and weaknesses; to think seriously and instrumentally about how to build a constituency within a social base (to “unite the many to defeat the few,” for those nostalgic for old slogans).

Ultraleftism is a maximalist politics. It’s much more about taking positions that express the intensity of one’s commitments than about organizing or building anything. Rather than crafting language to build broad support for a substantively radical program, for instance, ultraleftists prefer potted rhetoric that asserts their bona fides, without concern for communicating outside the ranks of believers.

Class Notes -- Adolph Reed

[prettykikimora]

I say that I'm a Marxist leninist on like 3 spots on my blog it's not a secret like I can lament how both Ukraine and russian nationalists are just pitting red army soldiers against one another in divisions that theyd never had even thought of in the past as some kind of modern got ya like "my ethnic group of guys killed the most fascists 100 years ago" does that make people from Kazakhstan more susceptible to fascism like what's the logic here? Its gross its erasing the historic contributions of each and every soldier and the actions of patriotic soviet Ukrainians reducing the 15 nation alliance to russia, something Russian nationalists do. Saying that is pro Putin now. A diatribe against reactionary nationalism is pro Putin now. Total brainless shit please die. 28 million soviet citizens didn't die for fascism and its beyond insulting to their memories to pretend as though they did because they didnt subscribe perfectly to your decadent pie in the sky ideals about how the world should work. We live in a world of ugly reaction, facts, and violence and the single most successful attempt to curb that mass violence did so without the opinion of westerners soaked in anarchist ultraleft dogshit theory that's never fed a nation, its never provided for the peoples well being, your biggest talking point is brewing fucking bathtub insulin.

[apas-95]

Thoughts on the Shining Path?

I've talked on them before, but, in brief - they're a good example of where ultraleftism and adventurism get you. Which is to say, nowhere. Unsurprisingly 'we bombed this random crowded marketplace because we had a truckbomb left over, but it's okay, the people who did it self-criticised' doesn't get people to support your political programme - and is exactly the kind of banditry that sits opposed to Mao's actual political practice, as exemplified by the Three Rules of Discipline and Eight Points for Attention. More than anything else, they were not responsible to the people, and held the people as their enemies.

[1000rh]

But there is, of course, nowhere else to start from. A different future has to be the future of this particular present. And most of the present is made up of the past. We have nothing with which to fashion a future other than the few, inadequate tools we have inherited from history. And these tools are tainted by the legacy of wretchedness and exploitation through which they descend to us. Marx writes in the Critique of the Gotha Programme of how the new society will be stamped with the birthmarks of the old order from whose womb it emerges. So there is no “pure” point from which to begin. To believe that there is is the illusion of so-called ultraleftism [...], which in its revolutionary zeal refuses all truck with the compromised tools of the present: social reform, trade unions, political parties, parliamentary democracy and so on. It thus manages to end up as stainless as it is impotent.

– Terry Eagleton, Why Marx Was Right (2011)

[evilsoup]

the two modes of left-wing discourse in relation to the democrats on this site seem to reflect the primary two failed strategies of the comintern - third period "after hitler, our turn" ultraleftism (which led to defeat in germany) and panicked "popular front" liberal tailism (which led to defeat in spain). the third strategy of allying with fascism doesn't see to be so big, though i guess you can draw comparisons with the dipshit version of anti-imperialism which actively cheers on putin or whatever.

obviously this is a farcical repeat of the tragedy of the comintern, as we're talking about tiny numbers who don't represent anyone greater than themselves vs the leadership of the world communist movement completely fumbling the international proletarian revolution and so allowing world capitalism to save itself via a second world war

[labgrownmeat]

I got some questions for ya from the be nosy game

4. What piercings do you want?

14. How would you spend a million dollars?

18. What tattoos do you want?

24. What are three places you want to travel?

43. What’s your guilty pleasure?

48. Describe your ideal partner.

4. besides needing to get my ears re-pierced, i think getting my nose and/or upper lip pierced would be cute.

14. invest most of it and leave myself enough to quit my job for a few years. maybe buy a Reasonable house, somewhere, for myself and a group of friends? that'd be nice

18. i'd like to get either caim or zero's pactmarks tattooed. not ENTIRELY sure where yet. zero pactmark on my lower belly would be cool. also i saw an instagram video earlier today where someone had tattooed the stripes from the top of their cats head on the back of their hand and i'd LOVE that

24. portland (to visit dear friends), toronto (to visit some other friends), japan (to visit zen temples and eat food and take the beautiful wonderful trains)

43. i have no guilty pleasures. i live without shame.

48. whoever the congruent puzzle pieces for a poly ultraleft mostly subby trans girl are. also who is chill and funny and likes to play video games with me. maybe someone who even lives in the midwest united states.

[dailyanarchistposts]

16. The activity of the Centro d’iniziativa Luca Rossi

This is why an activity like that undertaken by the Centro d’iniziativa Luca Rossi [1990’s] is relevant, which we may summarize as follows:

Clarifying the revolutionary tradition, which is necessary in order to establish some principles that transcend the waves of barbarism that capital has unleashed on the world that it has colonized (racism, war, the bloody resurgence of national conflicts like those of the period before the First World War, the belligerent expansionism of the old religions), with special attention to the ultraleft current of the epoch of fascism and Stalinism. This labor implies the resumption of the projects that were underway in the seventies and which could not be concluded: the affirmation of communism and its positive description. Because we must confront the mystification that accompanied the collapse of that which seventy years of counterrevolution falsely passed off as “communism,” while fascism and racism no longer just play the role of spectacular scarecrows but have become gigantic zombies armed to the teeth.

Drawing up a balance sheet of the Italian radical current, because the revolutionary eruption of those years “set fire to” a series of questions without actually answering them, and got stuck in a dead end just when the time seemed to be most favorable for its activity (1977). This is why it is necessary to demarcate that historical experience in order to extract the requisite lessons from it. There is a clear necessity, among other things, of making accessible the results of this endeavor, but it is unthinkable that this should be done outside the boundaries of a discussion that would make it comprehensible and that would make it an object of criticism for today’s revolutionaries. It is therefore necessary to confront a double task: to spread the principle texts of the seventies and to try to draw up a critical balance sheet of that period.

In the short term, we have to avoid repeating the error that was made at that time and that would be totally unthinkable today: the valorization of isolation (which transforms theoretical activity into something abstract and unverifiable). To the contrary, the experiences of the revolutionaries in the workplaces, in the rank and file proletarian organizations, and in the social centers, must be very carefully analyzed without making any exceptions, since they constitute a vital element, without which not even the preliminary formulations of therevolutionary tradition would be viable. One lesson that may be immediately drawn from the radical theory of the seventies is that the revolutionaries cannot omit the concrete relations with the social struggle without swelling the ranks of so many brilliant former revolutionaries; and at the same time, they cannot renounce the concrete and living critique of everyday life without eventually succumbing to passive nihilism.

There is no need to fear the organizational and institutional solutions that could serve to attain full practical efficacy. In the current conditions of the profound crisis of capitalism, in which the best elements of the international revolutionary proletariat are not, however, prospering—and there is not even a prosperous class movement capable of self-defense—the revolutionaries face all the typical dangers of the previous periods of retreat, but they still do not possess any historical relation with a recent movement of generalized struggle. Thus, in a certain sense, today much more than in the seventies, we move along the edge of the abyss, threatened by the snare of desperation, deception, and the “catastrophic” crisis of devalorization, in which it is becoming ever more difficult to find a solution in attack and revolt, a solution that, after all, in comparison with our current situation, used to be within reach. So that now, no one may allow himself any kind of indulgence on the terrain of isolation. Revolutionary community, organization and solidarity are urgent necessities, whose absence is dramatically obvious, but whose realization is terribly distant. All of which calls for strong bonds between revolutionaries, without any kind of sectarianism. The current period of “preparatory” work, of clarification of principles, requires not only coherence and intransigence, but also an enrichment of contacts, of sources and discussions. The revolutionary milieu is in itself too weak, it is too much of a “nostalgic” parody of what it once was, to be capable of constituting by itself a valid point of reference. That is why it needs all the contributions it can get, in order to create some degree of circulation of ideas, of research, of study, that would at least establish the minimal conditions for a resurgence.

There will be no movement without principles and without theory, nor will there be any movement if we reproduce the narrow-mindedness that characterized the decline of the radicals.