blinkandwheeze posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

For example, the overwhelming tendendy of the western left today is to focus on liberal issues as sites of independent struggle which don't "go away" with socialism. The obsessive focus on lgbt rights in cuba should show that an obsession with practical politics is the opposite of utopianism: it is the abandonment entirely of the idea that socialism is an entirely new society which is necessarily more advanced than the capitalist world in culture.

i don't really understand what you're saying here. maoism quite clearly asserts that the cultural conditions of this new society do not come merely as givens but require the programmatic and conscious intervention of the masses to assert. lgbt rights or similar social concerns do not "go away" an require particular intervention as independent struggles even if their material basis is tied to broader systems. this was the basis for a great deal of social campaigns carried out during the cultural revolution, feudal and patriarchal attitudes were still pervasive throughout this new society which is why things like the Criticise Confucius campaign were mobilised

Well getfiscal was talking about the dissident fiction of maoism in the west so im trying to speak on those terms. I'm more interested in the discursive role of the lgbt struggle in cuba for western leftists than the reality of the struggle in China or in the west. Of course you could criticize the maoist movement of the 70s for backwards attitudes towards such questions but i am more interested in the reasons behind these positions rather than the positions themselves. Specifically the change from china leading all cultural questions to being subordinate to american cultural struggles. Though tbh i take a kind of Saidian/queer postmodern view of the question and presume that such questions aren't really answerable outside of local and discursive conditions which has been a way to avoid the toxicity of the debate in actual political practice.

babyhueypnewton posted:

Well getfiscal was talking about the dissident fiction of maoism in the west so im trying to speak on those terms. I'm more interested in the discursive role of the lgbt struggle in cuba for western leftists than the reality of the struggle in China or in the west.

right but there's no reason you're providing as to why your criticisms wouldn't equally apply to the efforts of the party in the cultural revolution or whatever. only the most ultraleft elements of actually existing socialism subscribe to the kind of utopianism you're talking about so i don't really see the value of this as a meaningful heuristic

if we're talking about why trotskyites are inordinately obsessed with practical politics post-revolution, i don't think they actually are, as a general principle. invoking lgbt rights in cuba has more to do with winning a rhetorical battle against an already designated enemy than a real substantial positions or approach. trotskyites will just as readily believe that these issues will be eliminated by the upcoming internationalist revolution when it suits them. and in practice they are notorious for sidelining these concerns when they are relevant, as in the multiple scandals we have seen in uk trotskyite parties of burying allegations of sexual violence

Constantignoble posted:

what are some good references for this stuff? has anyone ever published something like a comprehensive (or at least reliable) genealogy of leftist sects, or is this more something one picks up in drips and drabs from a hundred different books over years

us anti-revisionist chart, 1956-1977

c_man posted:

babyhueypnewton posted:

You can claim Mao-against-Mao while no one can claim Trotsky-against-Trotsky

this is interesting because ever now and then i see non-Trotskyist MLs talk about rescuing Trotsky from his supporters, who (apparently?) often take lines that Trotsky himself would have disavowed, which makes me think that some modern Trotskyists are actually doing this, but in the opposite direction, using Trotsky against Trotsky to work against a more functional anti-imperialist politics. I don't know much about it though but maybe some of that sounds familiar to you.

i love posting this at the ISO

swampman posted:

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/12/16/reports-at-least-10-nato-military-officers-captured-by-syrian-special-forces-this-morning-in-east-aleppo-bunker/

I was so excited when i saw this on the sidebar:

http://21stcenturywire.com/2016/12/17/neo-cons-are-trotskyites-how-the-system-perpetuates-faux-democracy-vid/

But sadly it's by a crazy person who's most recent article is "The Goonies IS About the Illuminati (And It’s a Rube Goldberg Machine)" though to be fair it makes a pretty strong case:

Aside from bizarre phallic references like the “Copper Bone” key that happens to look like a penis, “One Eyed Willy” (a reference to the Masonic secret) Goonies is a film about the “hidden history” of Astoria, a city built upon the wealth of a Masonic mafia family who eventually became “respectable.” The Sicilian mafia (the Fratellis) are displaced, giving way to a new family of dons who actually are part of the real Illuminati according to Dr. Carroll Quigley, the Cliveden Set and the Royal Society. The “secret” the Goonies discover is that their hallowed town was founded by goons – pirates and scallywag members of secret societies who made their name through the opium trade. The rise and fall of various dynasties (mafia families) is merely a determined cause-effect relationship, like a big, historical Rube Goldberg Machine.

This must have been what it was like to be against the lies about the iraq war when they were still fresh. What a crazy world we live in where basic facts are so hidden you have to ally with crazies (or maybe knowing these facts without the immortal science of marxism leninism drives you crazy?)

pogfan1996 posted:

Many Syrians, however, view these groups as preferable to the Assad government, even though they do not ultimately want to be ruled by them. Unlike the ISO, Syrians refuse to fall into the trap of treating rebel factions as legitimate targets, particularly after their success in helping temporarily break the siege of Aleppo in August 2016.

pogfan1996 posted:

http://muftah.org/leftists-rather-right-principled-syria/#.WFh8TdBOKhD

When the popular uprising against President Bashar Al-Assad broke out in 2011, I had the good fortune of reading the writing of my Syrian friend of twenty years, Robin Yassin-Kassab—co-author of the book Burning Country. From the beginning, and partly through the valuable insights of Syrians like Robin, I could see the direction that both pro-revolution and anti-revolution narratives were taking.

To put it simply, the Syrians who rose up against Assad saw their struggle as a simple one for freedom and dignity, while their enemies presented it as complicated by neighboring states that had purportedly reduced the revolution to an armed proxy war.

swampman posted:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/aleppo-fake-footage-children-five-peopele-arrested-egyptian-police-a7486541.html

"that's our al-qaeda: getting people involved, encouraging creativity,"