Politicians from both capitalist parties are terrified that Mamdani’s dominant primary victory signals the emergence of a mass socialist movement in the heart of global finance capital.
Are you of the belief there was ever a time when the ruling class did not oppose communism with their full might? You think communism rose in popularity in Russia because there was no repression? Meanwhile Lenin was exiled?
No, communism will be opposed full force regardless of cutesty trying to shift terms around. The western left isn’t toothless because it faces repression from the bourgeois organizations, the western left is toothless because it has no discipline to established party lines and nueters itself constantly.
The opposition was there, but the construction of a shared mass identity for workers was a viable strategy in the face of that specific environment, that now has changed. Political strategy is not a blueprint and just because it worked in a radically different environment, doesn’t mean it’s going to work again and, in fact, it failed over and over in the West for the last 40-50 years.
Identity is a primary driver of political participation and today almost nobody wants to be a communist: right-wingers because they are right-wingers, progressives because communists lost over and over, and even communist more often than not prefer to identify with a specific sect and present themselves as such. Just because an identity and a narrative worked once, doesn’t mean they will work every time.
The idea that “historical marxists were right but this time it’s different” is not a new or unique line. It’s a common basis for revisionism which dates all the way back to early Leninism. I would also love to see this disciplined western leftist movement, because from what I see, western leftists have been trying your strategy of capitulations and reformism (in everything but name) since before Gus Hall cemented it in the 60s which is what led us specifically to this moment in which the movement has no teeth. The solution is not to defang even further by removing even the allusion to socialism.
Nobody wants to be a communist in the west because the western communist movement doesn’t fight for anything. “Right wingers” and “progressives” don’t want to be communists because we have allowed communism to become an ambiguous term for whatever they dislike, rather than standing firm and saying “we are communists we want x”.
Have the workers been freed? Have the chains of capital been broken? If not then communism is alive and well, it just needs people willing to pick up it’s banner and put in the work and stop throwing it under the bus every chance they get in efforts to capitulate to liberals. Mamdani winning while calling himself a socialist is proof that the banner itself isn’t the problem, your asking us to retreat in the face of victory.
Are you of the belief there was ever a time when the ruling class did not oppose communism with their full might? You think communism rose in popularity in Russia because there was no repression? Meanwhile Lenin was exiled?
No, communism will be opposed full force regardless of cutesty trying to shift terms around. The western left isn’t toothless because it faces repression from the bourgeois organizations, the western left is toothless because it has no discipline to established party lines and nueters itself constantly.
The opposition was there, but the construction of a shared mass identity for workers was a viable strategy in the face of that specific environment, that now has changed. Political strategy is not a blueprint and just because it worked in a radically different environment, doesn’t mean it’s going to work again and, in fact, it failed over and over in the West for the last 40-50 years.
Identity is a primary driver of political participation and today almost nobody wants to be a communist: right-wingers because they are right-wingers, progressives because communists lost over and over, and even communist more often than not prefer to identify with a specific sect and present themselves as such. Just because an identity and a narrative worked once, doesn’t mean they will work every time.
The idea that “historical marxists were right but this time it’s different” is not a new or unique line. It’s a common basis for revisionism which dates all the way back to early Leninism. I would also love to see this disciplined western leftist movement, because from what I see, western leftists have been trying your strategy of capitulations and reformism (in everything but name) since before Gus Hall cemented it in the 60s which is what led us specifically to this moment in which the movement has no teeth. The solution is not to defang even further by removing even the allusion to socialism.
Nobody wants to be a communist in the west because the western communist movement doesn’t fight for anything. “Right wingers” and “progressives” don’t want to be communists because we have allowed communism to become an ambiguous term for whatever they dislike, rather than standing firm and saying “we are communists we want x”.
Have the workers been freed? Have the chains of capital been broken? If not then communism is alive and well, it just needs people willing to pick up it’s banner and put in the work and stop throwing it under the bus every chance they get in efforts to capitulate to liberals. Mamdani winning while calling himself a socialist is proof that the banner itself isn’t the problem, your asking us to retreat in the face of victory.