this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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chapotraphouse
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I mean most of these things arent yet experienced by the workers in the Global North. perhaps I'm an ally of the JDPON after all.
There's often no difference in form of newly minted communists punching left against third worldism, and liberals punching left against communists. Newly minted communists are mad that third worldism is both correct in its observations and morals. Third worldism is taking away the new toy they found tells them why their lives should be better than they are. Same thing happens with liberals and liberalism in respect to communism.
Liberals see their place in society as cosmopolitan educated socialites. Communism reminds them they are in reality subjects of a capital order, whose only worth is based on the money they accumulate not on any acculturation, morality, or valor.
Communists see their place in society as "proletarians" (I'm using this loosely and not technically), a solidaristic class of the oppressed, not as a class of oppressors. Third Worldism reminds them that in reality they sit on the backs of a global proletariat living in even greater precarity than they do, and their emancipation as a proletariat cannot be moral or ideologically consistent if the global proletariat is not emancipated.
You just explained why V*ush is so popular.
Me in 2020: Lol looks like we're done and Hamas is our only hope
Me in 2023: Hamas is our only hope
No offense, but I think fetishizing movements in the imperial periphery is a way to absolve responsibility from people in the imperial core. Communism tells liberals they need to do more, Third Worldism tells Communists they need to do more. It's not a hierarchy based on who has to deal with the most suffering, it's a hierarchy of who gains more benefit from the current state of the world and therefore who has more responsibility and power to fix it. You are simply shoveling the responsibility to those who comparatively the hardest battles.
Hamas can't save us. That idea is the idea of Red Dawn -- the same silly fantasy that libs have about the poorest taking their things -- but for potential allies of the invading communist movement, rather than its enemies. It's Communist Big Mommy
I mean, yeah of course, I don't literally mean Hamas or any other anti-colonialist resistance group is coming to do our work for us. I live in the Global South myself. What I mean is that those who live where the contradictions are the sharpest are the ones who have the power to move the historical process forwards because socialism isn't going to spring out of the ether in the imperialist countries, it will have to be imposed on them from the outside.
I think historically this has been proven out to be the opposite after all the USSR fell.
The only real hope that this is a way is that the CCP:
I have doubts about the practicality and reality of each of these steps. Even if you believe that steps 1 and 2 are going to happen. Step 3 is the most tenuous of all. China is very much a mind your own business country. They CCP does not and will not care that the people of the imperial core are suffering. It's not their problem.
I think the real problem for Marxists is they get too stuck on the "scientific" parts, and assume that means "determinism". This leads them to advocate ripping off previous playbooks (What Is To Be Done posting) wholesale rather than understand what from each previous playbook would work for their specific situation. You cannot build even a nascent state capitalist state that is attempting to build socialism let alone communism through a set of replicable steps. When in reality Marx describes the interaction purely through base and superstructure. There is no "if this then that" of building communism, you have to move these structures into alignment and continually reinforce base and superstructure in the direction of communist development. What works in one society may not work in a different one, (See Sino Soviet Split) what works in one society in the past may never work again in the same society in the future.
It's a similar reason why typically our capitalist societies cannot make good software. Not only is there simply not a "single way", but most people have their own experiences from the negative problems they have suffered building software for previous companies. These experiences may reinforce practices that seem to be helpful, but were only helpful in the context of the previous company.
Meanwhile China has done great things for its people, but it has put itself into the same position as those in the imperial core. There are contradictions in the Chinese economy. In order for China to make good on socialism by 2050, it essentially needs to kill its guided capitalist prosperity engine. This is going to make a lot of people uneasy and upset and many of them are also people who are in the CCP. Chinese development has also made it become a treatler country in many respects, I think American Communists don't recognize that. I think in practice we're all just doing a prisoners dilemma with each other and ultimately ourselves.
A huge example of the difference between China and the USSR right now is food. The USSR had always been a seasonal agriculture country, because having Western style supermarkets that are both price stable and more-or-less unaffected by seasonal availability is based on a network of global trade that requires extraction by its very nature. If you cannot produce food half the year, and the people that can produce food the other half of the year are equals, you can maintain price stability of food through trade. But the reality is that the Global South where this stability is based in, are not equals. So the way price stability is maintained is through deprivation, extraction and manipulation of global markets. In a socialist global system we're back at third worldism, you have to convince people who have it good to sacrifice for those that don't in a place they've never been, for reasons that are extremely difficult to articulate. China is a rich country now and in this way has created this problem for itself and historically benevolent internationalism hasn't really been a cultural tendency. Culturally and politically to China trade is trade, no more no less.
It's CPC not CCP
I'm using a common term not the technical term because if I use technical terms people don't understand what the fuck I'm saying. They might as well be called the FJKOSJAFAIFO if everyone calls them that. This isn't an academic paper. Also it's practically an exonym vs endonym issue. You should also berate me for calling it China and not Zhongguo or it's full endonymic name of Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo.
Everyone who posts on this site will understand what is meant by CPC
Literally everyone on this site just thinks you're a sinophobic lib when you say ccp instead of cpc unless doing an obvious bit, that is a terrible excuse.
Also exonym is a term imparted by an outside group, why not simply use the proper name, unless perhaps you have an axe to grind about China?
I don't think it's that serious. Lots of Chinese communists use CCP when speaking English because that's just the most common term, and the situation when using CPC is important is when its value as a shibboleth can actually be taken advantage of. Making a point to only use 'CPC' in Hexbear is just preaching to the choir.
Yeah but "third worldism" is commonly used by weird gonzalite westerners and combined with the CCP terminology it just gives off weird western maoist vibes.
Don't you mean Zhongguo Renmin Gongheguo.
Why don't you just come out and accuse me of whatever it is instead of trying to beat around the bush?
Is my communication style bad? Sorry I'm literally autistic.
Am I not fitting in? See above.
Am I an evil lib seeking to spread anti-China sentiment?
What is it?
It's complete debate pervert behavior to engage with a theory effort post by fixating on a technical label.
Pick one
Also very funny you accuse me of being a debate pervert when you are exhibiting that exact behavior and that is the reason I commented.
I respectfully started a conversation and stated my opinion in no way did I try to fight FunkyStuff or merthyr1831 and in fact I apologized to merthyr1831 if it came off that way based on me replying to what was clearly a joke.
Absolutely. I think there's a lot of bad rep for third worldists because they've had to deal with more than their fair share of people hijacking their theory and language, but in general the principles are on point.
But also I think we may sometimes discard its tenets as a meme/joke rather than taking it seriously (as I have done so here, regrettably). I'm thankful that even if the language is different now, colonialism and its consequences are finally being thoroughly critiqued within the economics of class and race by socialists the world over.
I apologise for the snarky/joke comment!
I wasn't trying to dress you down, and I'm sorry if it came off that way.
I was merely using the memery to explain how the OP tweet is completely wrong, because even within the context of Marxism there are Marxists who read the scantest of theory and are like 'WHAT DO YOU MEAN GLOBALLY I'M THE BAD GUY?'. This usually comes out when Conservatives point to the fact that the American poor are economically way richer than global poor. Which is correct and is merely a rephrasing of imperial capitalism. So upon seeing these arguments they usually dismiss them in an illogical way because the only thing they learned from Socialism in one country vs International Socialism is 'Trotsky bad'.