I can spend all day saying that that US capitalism is the biggest global threat to all forms of democracy but I squint my eyes at Putin once and (some!) people here will call me a star-spangled liberal. Frankly it’s frustrating.
I totally see why tankies are pissed off with some of the people who criticize you, because many of those people are indeed absolute idiots, just like most people on the internet. But if you throw everyone you disagree with into the liberal basket, you’ve taken the easy way out.
The biggest struggle Marxist-Leninists have right now is often getting people to understand imperialism as a material process and stage in capitalism, rather than a whim of this or that state. That’s often why many of us react rather sharply when someone uses a clearly less developed understanding of imperialism and mechanically applies it to Russia. Most people are on board with socialism. Most people at the moment are not on board with truly understanding that existing socialist states are heavily propagandized against, and this applies doubly to non-socialist states that align themselves against the imperialist powers out of a sense of self-preservation, which includes Russia and Iran.
I think we should admit that there is some oversensitivity with regard to perceived liberal agendas and that sometimes this gives way to reductionist characterisation and dismissal of opposition in our communities.
I also do not think that admitting as such is anything tantamount to confirmation of the tankie critique by the liberals (see what I did there?), which is also arguably even worse on this exact issue.
I can spend all day saying that that US capitalism is the biggest global threat to all forms of democracy but I squint my eyes at Putin once and (some!) people here will call me a star-spangled liberal. Frankly it’s frustrating.
I totally see why tankies are pissed off with some of the people who criticize you, because many of those people are indeed absolute idiots, just like most people on the internet. But if you throw everyone you disagree with into the liberal basket, you’ve taken the easy way out.
The biggest struggle Marxist-Leninists have right now is often getting people to understand imperialism as a material process and stage in capitalism, rather than a whim of this or that state. That’s often why many of us react rather sharply when someone uses a clearly less developed understanding of imperialism and mechanically applies it to Russia. Most people are on board with socialism. Most people at the moment are not on board with truly understanding that existing socialist states are heavily propagandized against, and this applies doubly to non-socialist states that align themselves against the imperialist powers out of a sense of self-preservation, which includes Russia and Iran.
Okay, but we’re not doing that. We’re not calling anarchists or other socialists liberals.
We are however calling social democrats liberals, because welfare capitalism is still capitalism.
I think we should admit that there is some oversensitivity with regard to perceived liberal agendas and that sometimes this gives way to reductionist characterisation and dismissal of opposition in our communities.
I also do not think that admitting as such is anything tantamount to confirmation of the tankie critique by the liberals (see what I did there?), which is also arguably even worse on this exact issue.
I would be curious to know what exactly this entailed, because if past events are anything to go by it may have been a less than tactful approach.