babyfinland posted:BALLIN_LIKE_STALIN posted:The FBI came to my house once and they were pretty inept. You should try and encourage them to come so you can see what I mean.
why did the FBI come to your house
chill, stroke shafts, maybe j/o.
Meursault posted:The question is, do the FBI plants even know that they're plants... any one of us could be a Manchurian sleeper agent and not even be aware of it
This is actually true. Certain ideologies, such as trokskyism, are actually in the service of the CIA.
The political import of the argument was much more immediate in the USA of the late 1940s. Shachtman’s support for the “elimination” of Stalinism from the labour movement dovetailed with the drive, central to McCarthyism, to purge the unions of Communist supporters, a necessary condition for the post-war deradicalization of the American working class (see, for example, Davis 1986: ch.2). So the WP backed Walter Reuther in his struggle to win control of the United Auto Workers from the Communist Party and its allies in 1946-7, an important episode in this process (Fisk 1977: 22-4). This was the beginning of the Shachtmanites’ more general identification with the Atlantic alliance against the Eastern bloc. In the late 1940s, disillusionment with the USSR and Cold War hysteria panicked many previously radical metropolitan intellectuals into the arms of the American government. The resulting phenomenon of “CIA socialism” is summed up by a scene later recalled by Lionel Trilling. At a meeting of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas rang Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, successfully to plead for funds to keep the committee going (Bloom 1986: 264). The Shachtmanites were very largely drawn from the milieu of the New York Intellectuals and were therefore heavily influenced by its evolution towards “liberal anti-communism” (Bloom 1986: chs.10 and 11; Wald 1987: chs.6-9). In 1958 the ISL dissolved itself into the Socialist Party-Social Democratic Federation, which proved to be merely a stage towards entry into the Democratic Party, where Shachtman became a stalwart of the Cold War Right, backing US intervention in Vietnam and even endorsing Richard Nixon in the 1972 presidential election.
From Alex Callinicos's Trotskyism, who himself is a trot and supported the Cliffite school of state capitalism, which itself led to support for imperialism during the Korean War and a long history of serving as a CIA front including present day support for imperialist intervention in Libya and Syria. This includes author of "the liberal defense of murder" Richard Seymore, which is ironic to say the least.
since it was never implemented in reality (and what was predicted, that "stalinism" was a temporary aberration and was incapable of creating a socialist state in the third world and that WWII was the terminal crisis of capitalism were completely wrong) trotskyism is an extreme form of a personality disorder present in trotsky, which is envy of Stalin and the idealism of a communist religion, pure of any real world imperfections.
using this definition, trotskyism is short hand for all idealist conceptions of communism removed from history, such as liberal socialists, anarchists, new-left hippies/occupiers, and first-worldists. it is perfect for CIA involvement and any manipulation by those machiavellians who deal in reality, and deserves a pickaxe whenever found.
babyhueypnewton posted:trotskyism is weird because trotsky himself had basically the same ideas as those that Stalin implemented. his predictions about the course of history and the nature of the Soviet Union were completely wrong. What is called "trotskyism" is a combination of the 1940 split in the SWP which created the actual CIA plants (Shachtman and the future neo-cons who chose to fixate on Stalin as the bad man) and the ideological CIA plants (Cliff and the state capitalists who simply chose to ignore history post-1921) and a personality cult around Trotsky.
since it was never implemented in reality (and what was predicted, that "stalinism" was a temporary aberration and was incapable of creating a socialist state in the third world and that WWII was the terminal crisis of capitalism were completely wrong) trotskyism is an extreme form of a personality disorder present in trotsky, which is envy of Stalin and the idealism of a communist religion, pure of any real world imperfections.
using this definition, trotskyism is short hand for all idealist conceptions of communism removed from history, such as liberal socialists, anarchists, new-left hippies/occupiers, and first-worldists. it is perfect for CIA involvement and any manipulation by those machiavellians who deal in reality, and deserves a pickaxe whenever found.
that is weird
babyhueypnewton posted:trotskyism is weird because trotsky himself had basically the same ideas as those that Stalin implemented. his predictions about the course of history and the nature of the Soviet Union were completely wrong. What is called "trotskyism" is a combination of the 1940 split in the SWP which created the actual CIA plants (Shachtman and the future neo-cons who chose to fixate on Stalin as the bad man) and the ideological CIA plants (Cliff and the state capitalists who simply chose to ignore history post-1921) and a personality cult around Trotsky.
since it was never implemented in reality (and what was predicted, that "stalinism" was a temporary aberration and was incapable of creating a socialist state in the third world and that WWII was the terminal crisis of capitalism were completely wrong) trotskyism is an extreme form of a personality disorder present in trotsky, which is envy of Stalin and the idealism of a communist religion, pure of any real world imperfections.
using this definition, trotskyism is short hand for all idealist conceptions of communism removed from history, such as liberal socialists, anarchists, new-left hippies/occupiers, and first-worldists. it is perfect for CIA involvement and any manipulation by those machiavellians who deal in reality, and deserves a pickaxe whenever found.
please edité this for addition to the front page
scalia posted:babyhueypnewton posted:trotskyism is weird because trotsky himself had basically the same ideas as those that Stalin implemented. his predictions about the course of history and the nature of the Soviet Union were completely wrong. What is called "trotskyism" is a combination of the 1940 split in the SWP which created the actual CIA plants (Shachtman and the future neo-cons who chose to fixate on Stalin as the bad man) and the ideological CIA plants (Cliff and the state capitalists who simply chose to ignore history post-1921) and a personality cult around Trotsky.
since it was never implemented in reality (and what was predicted, that "stalinism" was a temporary aberration and was incapable of creating a socialist state in the third world and that WWII was the terminal crisis of capitalism were completely wrong) trotskyism is an extreme form of a personality disorder present in trotsky, which is envy of Stalin and the idealism of a communist religion, pure of any real world imperfections.
using this definition, trotskyism is short hand for all idealist conceptions of communism removed from history, such as liberal socialists, anarchists, new-left hippies/occupiers, and first-worldists. it is perfect for CIA involvement and any manipulation by those machiavellians who deal in reality, and deserves a pickaxe whenever found.that is weird
weird as hell
discipline posted:tpaine if you can top my current av I'll swap it out.. but I think it'll be hard
wait for it...
for example, the cliffites (SWP/IST) in canada take an official position that only councilism is correct and that this means that social-democracy is basically useless. all their books talk about revolutionary "rehearsals" - they only think small council uprisings in places like portugal and poland count as pre-revolutionary moments. so theoretically they are supposed to be a third camp against social-democracy and the right-wing. in practice though they entirely support social-democracy. for example, one of their few prominent members in quebec was a candidate for a social-democratic party in this month's election. in ontario they hold events about the ndp's "orange wave" in a positive sense, even though they tack on little things in the inside pages about how well the NDP can't bring real socialism ever.
as huey said, this plays out in the foreign policy too. the basic line is to oppose foreign intervention but to support the uprising. they will write about how there are elements of the american-backed forces that are against open american intervention and write about how the revolution can only be fully successful if it turns against capitalism. but as shachtman knew quite well this always dovetails with american imperialism, it is exactly what the americans want.
there was a buddhist priest who did peace walks during the vietnam war who was asked who he supported, the north or the south. and he said he supported the middle. but the real middle was the north. the priest's middle - pretending you could be in the middle of a real historical conflict - was the south. the US doesn't mind peace movements insofar as they imply that the insurgency is bad too. then it's just a mass of chaos and war where you default to structures of power, and those structures are controlled by capitalism. so in egypt the SWP has people on the ground fighting for councilist communism but at the end of the day they end up working for muslim brotherhood campaigns despite the fact that this is pretty much the antithesis of literal third campism.
babyfinland posted:marxism-leninism is capitalist restoration
i think you mean social democrats
getfiscal posted:but as shachtman knew quite well this always dovetails with american imperialism, it is exactly what the americans want.
can you elaborate a bit more on that point? are you making a distinction between rebels and revolutionaries?
which is all really prelude to the big issue of "okay then what should we do"? i dunno. even what's "worked" (dictatorships around a few leaders backed by a mass party within a national liberation front) seems to go sour pretty quickly. that might have been because of "other factors" or something, but the world doesn't give part marks for failing nicely.
karphead posted:can you elaborate a bit more on that point? are you making a distinction between rebels and revolutionaries?
i mean like take syria. the most popular trotskyist line is "support the rebels, oppose foreign intervention". but what does this mean in practice - they produce a constant stream of articles about how they support the rebels. one canadian trotskyist wrote about how he found it despicable that the canadian peace coalition didn't target russia and china for supporting assad in their statement calling for no western imperialism in syria. then he noted that there was a rebellion in syria worth supporting. well that just shows how the left lines up behind imperialism by criticizing its opponents and supporting its agents.
this doesn't make the opposite necessarily correct - just supporting governments because they oppose the west, or opposing all rebellions in "rogue" states or whatever. it just means that certain positions tend to have functions within imperialism.
AmericanNazbro posted:babyhueypnewton posted:trotskyism is weird because trotsky himself had basically the same ideas as those that Stalin implemented. his predictions about the course of history and the nature of the Soviet Union were completely wrong. What is called "trotskyism" is a combination of the 1940 split in the SWP which created the actual CIA plants (Shachtman and the future neo-cons who chose to fixate on Stalin as the bad man) and the ideological CIA plants (Cliff and the state capitalists who simply chose to ignore history post-1921) and a personality cult around Trotsky.
since it was never implemented in reality (and what was predicted, that "stalinism" was a temporary aberration and was incapable of creating a socialist state in the third world and that WWII was the terminal crisis of capitalism were completely wrong) trotskyism is an extreme form of a personality disorder present in trotsky, which is envy of Stalin and the idealism of a communist religion, pure of any real world imperfections.
using this definition, trotskyism is short hand for all idealist conceptions of communism removed from history, such as liberal socialists, anarchists, new-left hippies/occupiers, and first-worldists. it is perfect for CIA involvement and any manipulation by those machiavellians who deal in reality, and deserves a pickaxe whenever found.please edité this for addition to the front page
I'll make a thread of it, about time we had a trot thread.
AmericanNazbro posted:aerdil posted:sure but theres a difference between some automated spider program w/ a bored defense contractor intern behind it & an actual government official keeping an eye on things
what?
besides, there is no /real/ difference. deadken, impper, Joel, etc... all effectively fill the roll of a cointelpro forum operative. all cointelpro does is goad people into violent action, while keeping tabs on activists and the latter is already achieved by some server hub in utah. the nsa no longer has the need to employ covert operatives, because we, the nihilist westerners, have become the cointelpro simulacrum, and what's horrible about that realization is that we don't even get paid or have lucrative heroin distribution contracts
Honor is more valuable than money. And why rely on bots? Regularly submit new information at https://tips.fbi.gov
catpee posted:hey getfiscal i heard the student protests in montreal more or less won, whats up with that? maybe resurrect your old thread for an answer or something
basically what happened is the liberals called an election and then basically everyone except the far-left agreed to play along with electoralism. there was even a prominent student leader as a PQ candidate. anyway the election was very close and the only reason the PQ is forming government is because the right wing split their vote. like 57% of people voted for either the CAQ or Liberals, and had a few thousand votes shifted then the Liberals would have won again. for example, the PQ did about the same as last time in vote and seat count. so technically the right-wing holds a majority in the assembly but yeah the PQ will kill the tuition hike for now and repeal the anti-protest law. but like who knows what will happen a year or two from now.
quebec solidaire, a left-wing party, got 6% of the vote and 2 seats. which is okay for a small party although QS got a lot of attention this campaign. their platform was interventionist and social-democratic but it wasn't as far as something like SYRIZA, even though it is basically the same sort of coalition. they talked up free education and a basic income but they seem to think this would somehow happen uneventfully, as if there wouldn't be a huge counterattack. this is partially because they don't really expect to win so much as hold the PQ government to its promises (which were surprisingly sorta-left-wing themselves).
i'm not sure that this model of left front can "win" the entire thing but it does seem to at least have an effect. like it has had some success in places like venezuela and greece, in different ways. and at least in venezuela they have started to go beyond simple electoralism and involving lots of people in the process. at a human level it seems better to try to work in broad left-social-democratic coalitions than to isolate into tiny militant groups or something. for example, the hoxhaists in france work within the Front de Gauche, in greece most marxists probably work in the KKE or SYRIZA or ANTARSYA or something.
which is a crass argument for entryism i guess and it tails social-democracy but i mean i don't know what else is useful.
getfiscal posted:which is a crass argument for entryism i guess and it tails social-democracy but i mean i don't know what else is useful.
actually that's not even true, i don't really agree with what i said.
capitalism and its state are essentially a single sort of unit. it is constructed in a complex way that integrates some frustrations from workers but it is ultimately a sort of weapon that fights to keep class privileges. and it is basically set up to make radical change impossible. every time you try to encroach on those class privileges by electing a left-wing party you will either have to fight a civil war to survive or you will get crushed. and if you don't get crushed internally then a huge array of international forces will bear down on you.
so the "safe" thing to do in that situation is play the game - but you can't do that for long either, because the goalposts shift. capitalism can't survive in a static sort of arrangement, it needs to constantly try to rip more and more value out of workers. so there is no such thing as "class peace" - which is ultimately what all social-democratic views are about.
aerdil posted:good pts. getfiscal. we should all join the college democrats and continue to introduce fascist aesthetics into the party
what's wrong with democrats? they are clearly the lesser evil.
getfiscal posted:what's wrong with democrats? they are clearly the lesser evil.
since when did my gf get an account here?
u date a democrat