Discussion Community for fellow Marxist-Leninists and other Marxists.
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Check out ProleWiki for a communist wikipedia.
Essentially do you see any big modern marxist public figures coming in as the "old guard" ages out? Who?
There are other decent figures who are younger. Vijay Prishad is only 55. We’ve got everyone in the revleft podcast family. In addition, more zoomer centered figures like the deprogram people and hasan.
Came here to say Vijay as well even tho he's not that young he should have a good 20+ years in him still, hopefully.
For anticapitalist content from Turtle Island, I think we need to start looking for and platforming more Black and Indigenous decolonial content creators. Ones who can take the lessons from the past and apply them to the conditions of the here and now. There are already many people like this on TikTok. Personally I wouldn't put too much trust in big Twitch streamers, but that's just my take.
I really like this take. I'd love to see members of The Red Nation or other content creators who have experienced the worst of Capitalism and Imperialism(whether because of race, nationality, sexuality, etc.) become more mainstream.
These are big shoes to fill and they will of course be filled by Bad Empanada and Vaush.
If Vaush becomes the new Parenti I am going to [REDACTED]
Hi comrade, is something wrong with bad empanada? I watched a few of his and thought it was pretty neat. I am asking because you mention him together with vaush.
He doesn't acknowledge PRC's achievements, doesn't support AES except Cuba (I think) and doesn't align himself with other anti-imperialists. He attacks journalists critical of the west, I faintly recall a bona fide NED spook quote tweeting BE to attack the Greyzone.
Insofar as he limits himself to attacking rightists, especially the ones claiming to be socialists, he's fine.
He calls himself socialist, supports LatAm social democracy, and defended Stalin from holodomor lies, but he constantly has bad China takes, and his streaming channel is toxic.
Any chance you could tell me what those initialisms mean? Thanks.
Not OP but I believe:
PRC - People's Republic of China. Self explanatory.
AES - Actually Existing Socialism. Countries that are now operating under at least a form of socialist government.
NED - National Endowment for Democracy. A front for US operations abroad, such as the Hong Kong protests.
BE - Bad Empanada, obviously.
I don't think he's particularly well versed on politics. iirc he has a bachelors in Latin American history but otherwise he's essentially just a shitposter with common sense like most of us here and admits as much. Not an intellectual by any means.
As streamers go he's far from the worst. He is not in the same league as Vaush in the slightest. But he's not in the same league as Parenti either.
I've never seen him apologise for furthering the Uighur genocide hoax.
Glory to Bad Empanada Thought!
Zizek! I'm kidding, but maybe the answer is not in the West, but elsewhere, and maybe the media just doesn't pay attention to them because it is in their best interest.
Lemmygradians
Marxism is doomed 😔
Comrade, get a hold of yourself. A hundred generations live in us, waiting for the final victory of socialism. And if it won't be us, it's going to be our sons and daughters
Oh, I was just joking
me too kinda
Lmao nice
Brian Becker gives pretty good material analysis on the socialist program.. also man I sure do love Norman Finkelstein but he's not pushing M/L as much. One thing for sure Richard Wolff has brought a ton of new folks into the light. And there will always be the king Yellow Parenti..
IIRC Finkelstein had some dog shit takes about trans people recently, when he misses he misses hard.
No one mentioned our second habibi, HasanAbi🤤. What Iam seeing is more like stochastic forms of learning among people which lackes centre public figures. I do not think this is bad but moving forward figures who can put theory in to practice should emerge and it will.
Hasan was my gateway in and here's hoping there's more people to follow
Who comes next in terms of dying?
Two people in this thread say that with the internet, we can move away from "big public figures"/"big thinkers". While I appreciate this optimism, it just sounds very anti-authoritarian, and I quote from Engels On Authority:
Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority.
There are anti-government and anti-"big corp/business" tendencies in the US/West, which I will call "anti-authority" for now. The essense of "anti-authority" in capitalist countries is anti-capitalism, or anti-"dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", but there is a gap in this logic that stops people from turning into marxists right away, as they might instead become anarchists. This gap in logic will not be closed just by having everyone have access to free information through the internet, as there is too much information to digest, and imperialists will also interfere with the propagation of marxist ideology.
"Anti-authoritarian" sentiments do have positive outcomes, like decentralized technologies (think internet, bittorrent, p2p, fediverse etc.), the open source software movement, but these only serve as tools, they are the means and not the end.
In addition to this, one of the selling points of Parenti, Woolf, Hudson, Furr(?) is that they're accredited professionals. This isn't to take an elitist stance on my part. But it counts to the audience that must be reached.
There is an alternative, which is to develop working class education. For us and by us. Reading groups are good, but I'd argue that a fuller program and curriculum is needed. Some examples exist. But we need to get to the stage where they're in all our communities, wide-ranging, and not just online. Many people don't have basic literacy or numeracy skills, nevermind a theoretical understanding of political economy.
This goes back to my first point. It's not just that being well regarded academics means that people will listen. It's that well regarded academics are good at explaining things and teaching. I think that's why e.g. Parenti and Woolf are so effective.
I don't think simply making knowledge accessible in a bourgeois world will make people radical. The bourgeoisie control the means of distribution as well as production. Most people never encounter (1) counter narratives, or (2) encouragement to learn to think critically beyond a shallow liberal sense of the phrase.
Without these, most people aren't even aware (i) that a Marxist critique exists or (ii) what a Marxist critique can offer. This is what intellectual titans like parenti and Woolf provide. There are others, though, and more coming through every day.
I want to note that English-speaking people might be comfortable with applying "anti-authority" to everything due to their imperalist environment, but this causes a lack of awareness of socialist authorities that are in power, such as China. That is why it is important to move away from "anti-authority" to anti-capitalism.
I actually think that with the internet and everything, we will gradually move away from "big thinkers". Sure, there will still be people producing decent theory, but i just can't see in the current world a russian revolution like scenario when whole shifts at factories would meet up to read Marx.
I believe we will move towards a sort of "crowdsourced" theory where the main theoretical line is born organically out of continuos communication and discussion until we eventually get to a point where most contradictions and disagreements are solved. At that point the "big thinker" and his work will be one of many inputs, and not some sort of ideological hegemon.
Sort of like it is happening on here. We didn't read the same stuff, but with time the community shaped itself to a point where we substantially agree with each other on pretty much everything.
I believe we will move towards a sort of “crowdsourced” theory where the main theoretical line is born organically out of continuos communication and discussion until we eventually get to a point where most contradictions and disagreements are solved.
Not if the CIA or FBI have anything to say about it. Hell not if Maoists and Trots still exist. Hell not if grifters still exist and wield enormous influence that trickles into and infects even those who condemn them on the whole.
This feels kind of like thinking along anarchist lines. That if we only allow everyone to do their thing, people will just arrive at the right conclusions. Even if all institutions sabotaging Marxism magically vanished tomorrow and everyone forgot they existed and their methods, there would still be problems with this. With them existing and those who benefit from them and replicate their suppression and division, this is a pipedream. There's a reason parties adopt a party line, and that's because you'll never get 100% agreement. The point of that of course being, disagree behind closed doors, discuss, debate, but then present a united front once dem-cent process is done whether you lose or win. However you'll always have haters, power-mongers, fed-plants, and people high on their own fumes.
We need a party, a real movement and leadership within that movement to begin to write down any worthwhile theory in the west. Moreover that movement has to have some sort of success beyond just being mildly popular as CPUSA was in the 30s. Theory without practical, proven application is just spitballing hypotheticals into the void and not necessarily worth a lot.
Also I'll offer a lot of the western left is infected, deeply with idealism, western nonsense thinking, etc. I think the worthwhile theory of our era is going to come out of China and be translated. At least until the west begins to crumble and a real movement that begins notching successes forms in the west. Until that point it's largely naval-gazing. The one thing we can try and do right now is solidarity, solidarity, solidarity with other nations and peoples. Anti-imperialism is the one litmus test, wishing for the defeat of the west to which we must hold ourselves and all who would call themselves Marxists who are not in fact vulgar perverters of that term. Ukraine has been helpful in this, weeding out those still clinging to the propaganda of empire and the bourgeoisie who benefit from it.
We need to make sure people without a "higher education" understand socialism and communism.
I think with mass literacy, bilingual normalcy and now the internet that we're reaching a point where "big public figures" are less desirable. There is even some problems with trying too hard to have some, as we all know a couple internet celebrities who might as well be astroturfed feds co-opting these roles. Maybe the prolewiki is the next big Marxist.
More of just barks & make beliefs, the US system is doomed to no avail but here we are watching it all crumble.
It will only get worse with the economic warfare, Repression/Regression/Chaos/Divide/Disorder.
The 4th Reich is a fitting name, they keep destroying progressive movements from the inside anyway.
To What End really, honestly don't want to know the answer to this question but you gotta ask yourself was it worth it?
Check out Ben Norton & Radhika Desai's work and a recently discovered one for more context:
Decolonised history by Historicly & Deep-State by Aaron Good:
Edit:
Added links & more content
Look at the roster of writers at Verso Books, Haymarket Books, Pluto Press. There are lots of great left thinkers working right now.
Breht, Allison, and you, Comrade.
