Rainer is a shill. Anyone who’s been listening to the PSL and to Becker’s analyses knows that Becker is not against multipolarity. Becker’s position is summed it quite well in the quotations Rainer pulls out of context - multipolarity is not a solution, only socialism is a solution.
The interpretation Rainer applies to the words of Becker are bald-faced bad faith interpretation. Becker is being quoted literally as saying that China and Russia are not looking to replace the US as the new global hegemon. Becker doesn’t disavow multipolarity, nor does he state it should be resisted. Martin’s quotation, which echoes Becker’s analyses from other contexts, is that Russia isn’t communist and in fact may even be anti-communist, and there are other countries in BRICS that are also anti-communist domestically. We must be vigilant there. Becker’s position on Russia is measured - the US is at fault and also war is hell. We don’t need to revel in bloodshed to have a multipolar analysis, nor do we need to defend Russia as a pure beacon of hope in order to understand the historical context that led to the now-escalating conflict nor to understand a Russian victory as the only outcome that will support socialism, a position that Becker has reiterated for years.
Rainer selects quottations from Becker and Becker’s work that demonstrate Becker’s position and instead of using them to establish a consistent reading of the PSL’s position uses them to make a contradiction where none exists. First, Rainer assumes that the measured and nuanced position on Russia means Becker/PSL is anti-multipolarity, believes Russia and China are imperialist, and that the PSL is PatSoc. Then, Rainer selects quotations from the PSL and from Becker that disprove his own assumptions, but he frames that as “see how inconsistent these people are, they are disproving their own thesis”.
I don’t know what game Rainer is playing and who’s paying him, but he’s completely lost my trust in every single substack article I’ve ever read from him. He completely misrepresents the PSL and Becker and uses modern “journalistic” techniques like a strong propagandist does. Reports some facts, misinterprets those facts but frames the interpretation as fact not opinion, then reasons from there to a conclusion that is completely and obviously untenable, with the only goal of leaving the reader with an impression about the ideology of a third party.
If you read this particular piece, the only logical conclusion from the perspective of the author is that 100% of what has been said by the Russian government must be taken as pure unadulterated fact and that any attempt at interpreting the situation beyond that is equivalent to opposition of Russia. Every single serious communist treats the words of any government as propaganda, and as such, always takes a nuanced approach to interpretation. Rainer does not seem to even acknowledge this as a possibility, yet clearly demonstrates the capability by applying a nuanced interpretation of Becker and the PSL.
AFAIK, Rainer is a wrecker and a spoiler. He may be an op. He may just be a PatSoc looking to undermine the PSL so that something more vile can fill the void. My money is on him being an op.
I highly recommend you all listen to Becker’s podcast (The Socialist Program) and listen specifically to the episodes on Ukraine and on Multipolarity and come to your own conclusions. And if you find that my assessment of Becker is a reasonable one, I would highly recommend putting up shields whenever Rainer’s work comes through. From my perspective it’s getting bad enough that I think we need to really consider as a community where we are going to limit how Rainer’s work comes through here. I fear that amplifying and propagating his work is dangerously anti-communist.
Shea is such a bad faith op, I’m not even sure why people take him seriously. Another funny thing that I saw in the article was that he quoted Becker saying “what we need is the multipolar world.’…as a Leninist” when Becker says in the full interview “as a marxist leninist”. It’s literally ONE WORD that he chose to editorialize out. Why would he do this? I don’t know…
Is there something we can do on Lemmygrad to limit Shea’s impact? It feels like we moved the reactionary memes into a single community to stop their spread, but now we have this brain rot coming in elsewhere. Maybe we can ping @yogthos@lemmygrad.ml to opine?
Maybe the best approach is to just dissect this stuff when it gets posted and explain why the takes are bad. Maybe can start aggregating common tropes and addressing them on prolewiki or something so we can just link to an existing article when something comes up repeatedly. I think it’s particularly important to deal with people who claim to have a Marxist position and argue in bad faith because they ultimately end up driving people away. It has to be clear that they don’t speak for us, and why we disagree with their position.
Well, there is no article on Rainer Shea. This might end up being a project for a bunch of people to do the research into Shea, gather his works and appearances, and then attempt to build a map of his positions, and then dismantle his problematic positions thoroughly. Sounds like a ton of work.
I’d be happy to help contribute to it :)
I’m not trying to be pedantic here, especially since I’m new to posting here, but I have to ask: why can’t we just ban them? Would we not ban Matthew Heimbach just because there’s a picture of him holding a communist flag? To anyone paying attention, Rainer Shea has been a long-standing problem in virtually every active communist community on the internet. He polemicizes anyone who doesn’t support allying with the US far-right. I saw this post 2 months ago and he’s gotten so much worse since: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheDeprogram/comments/139750w/petition_to_ban_rainer_sheas_blogaccount/
Do we just not have the resources to enforce a ban? I think he should be treated the same as Wisconcom.
I also support a wiki page and would contribute to it.
Personally, I’m not against banning stuff like that either, but there is educational value in discussing it critically as well. A lot of people here are well informed and are able to intelligently address such articles which helps others learn in turn. I’m not a mod though, so would be good to hear what our mods views on this are. :)
but there is educational value in discussing it critically as well.
I used to disagree with this take, but I’m honestly kind of coming around to it; especially the more bald-faced the pleas for legitimacy from opps become. The minute we turn our eyes away, that’s when they’ll burrow their heads beneath the skin.
I don’t think we need to ban Shea posting. It’s not like he’s a griefer or spammer, he’s just someone who writes blogs that sometimes get shared. It’s true he should be delegitimized, but that can be done through having struggle sessions like these better than outright banning him.
I think he’s fully delegitimized among those who know his name. The problem is that he’s not gonna stop posting literal made-up bullshit and new people will upvote and uncritically consume it because he uses headlines like “Why Anti-Imperialism is Good”. While I will bully him at every sighting, I can’t commit to being online as much as him.
As long as it’s confined to the infighting comm I don’t think it’s a problem. But he’s clearly strategic about where and when to post each article to trick the most people into reading.
I don’t think my proposal is unreasonable. This site is not a big tent, there’s already a separate site for that.
“Why Anti-Imperialism Is Good”
seems like the left version of “Why Protecting Children Is Good” to defend an anti trans law
Shame IMO the same dishonest rhetorical tactics can be found on both sides.
I think it’s fine as it is. Most of the Rainer Shea posts recently have been in the leftist infighting community, as a place to criticize them after OP found the sort of reaction they got.
Hard agree, we should also remember his bad faith readings of Gerald Horne. There are a lot of people (online) who take Rainer’s portrayal of certain writers at face value. His bad faith quotes continue into his preferred writers in the form of book worship as well.
All of these attacks to defend coat tailing libertarians and PatSocs. 🤷🏾
For anyone whose really interested in what Becker said, go to the 1 hour and 24 minute mark and watch the whole section. Becker never says that he’s opposed to multipolarity, but that multipolarity as an end all be all is not what socialists should strive for. He asks the question "How can we make radical change in America by saying ‘Vladimir Putin is our leader?’, which is a very salient point. He goes on to say that we should strive for socialist leadership in all of our countries. What is so off about that? Seriously?
The point about the WW1 and multipolarity is making the point that multipolarity alone doesn’t end war. Multipolarity between capitalist powers is still destructive.
Rainer Shead is really good at finding convenient quotes from revolutionaries and diluting it to hell and back. He cites Kim il Sung saying “The differences of state socio-political systems, political views or religious beliefs can by no means be an obstacle in the way of joint struggle against U.S. imperialism”, but just thinking about it for like 20 seconds, this obviously wouldn’t mean supporting reactionary states against the US for the pure sake of it. Would Kim il Sung have supported Hitler? Obviously not.
This dude misses so often.
Becker: has a based take on multipolarity
Z-posters: durrrr russia goodHe asks the question "How can we make radical change in America by saying ‘Vladimir Putin is our leader?’, which is a very salient point. He goes on to say that we should strive for socialist leadership in all of our countries. What is so off about that? Seriously?
Nothing is wrong with that in general, but who is he saying it to? Who are these people that only want multipolarity and simp for Putin? His call for socialism is good, but ignores the material reality of today’s world in which new socialist construction is not possible without first the decline of US hegemony.
I don’t like Shea and think he’s quite problematic, but your comment about what Kim is saying is, I think, not a good portrayal.
but just thinking about it for like 20 seconds, this obviously wouldn’t mean supporting reactionary states against the US for the pure sake of it. Would Kim il Sung have supported Hitler? Obviously not.
The USSR and China did ally with other capitalist and imperialist forces against Japan and Germany in WW2. And today’s world is largely split into two camps - the US and China. Critical support given to Russia (which while being reactionary still currently plays a progressive role globally in the struggle against US hegemony and is allied to the world’s socialist countries, though only out of necessity) is not the same as “supporting Hitler”. Putin and Russia today are not equivalent to Hitler and Nazi Germany.
As Losurdo puts it:
we can speak of a struggle against a new colonial counter-revolution. We can speak of a struggle between the imperialist and colonialist powers — principally the United States — on the one side, and on the other we have China and the third world. Russia is an integral part of this greater third world, because it was in danger of becoming a colony of the West.
Brian Becker and the PSL critically support Russia. Shea takes the critical part and makes it seem like Becker is a “Russia bad” commentator. He’s not. Don’t listen to Shea talk about Becker. Listen to Becker directly and form your own opinion. When you do, you’ll see Shea is dangerous.
I do not totally dismiss much of Shea’s writing, yet this is wrecker behavior. Anyone who listens to what PSL is actually saying knows they are not against multipolarity, they’re the only prominent Amerikan communist organization even tackling its importance!
I don’t take anything Shea says at face value. I’ve listened to the part of the interview in question and find Becker’s answers to be weird and contradictory. As I’ve explained in another comment, he answers the question “is it good that unipolarity has been challenged?” and his answer is in essence no because it seems like he just argues against some multipolarity in general without considering the material reality of today’s world split into the west and the rest (with China on top). His answer implies that today’s multipolarity is like that of pre-WW1 which is in contradiction with his stance in general.
He’s answering the question. Multipolarity, in a vacuum, does not immediately lead to socialism. Socialism must be present along with multipolarity.
He’s waffling and refusing to give a clear answer, and the only correct answer for a socialist to give is: yes, because without the defeat of the unipolar US hegemony socialism cannot arise or thrive anywhere.
I guess this is exactly where this belongs then, in leftist infighting. My comrade, you are applying a ridiculous purity test to a political figure who has a much bigger scope of influence, audience, and perspective than you do. And you are choosing to give Rainer Shea the benefit of the doubt in his assessment that the PSL isn’t worth listening to despite being shows as a bad actor but not willing to listen to more of Brian Becker to understand where he’s coming from despite multiple comrades telling you that it’s worth the time because Becker explicitly supports the end of US hegemony.
My perspective is that of someone sitting outside of the US for whom the defeat of US imperialism is the primary interest since that is what is making my life worse and revolution in my country impossible at the moment. I don’t know the conditions in the US well enough to say whether what Becker is doing is worth it to attract more people to his movement, but my impression is that he is misjudging the level of support that exists for anti-imperialist and anti-NATO position among the general population. Except that he seems to primarily be addressing a liberal and socdem audience which is why he thinks he needs to add all these caveats and hide his real views.
Dualism isn’t dialectic, it’s a patently blatant fallacy.
There’s more than two sides to anything.
Eating the horse to catch the cow…
Meaningless word salad. Give me a clear answer: how can socialism arise let alone survive anywhere in the world today so long as the US empire, unless challenged in the way that Russia and China are currently doing, is free to use its global reach and all military and economic power at its disposal to strangle any nascent revolution in its infancy and slowly ratchet up the suffocating pressure on the remaining AES states? What other alternative is there than for some state or states to take the fight to the empire and actually hit them back and weaken them the way Russia and China are currently doing?
Please, if you know one, tell me of a practical path to revolution and socialism in a world where the US empire reigns supreme.
A lot of leftists like to talk about anti-imperialism in the abstract, but what Russia and China are currently doing is anti-imperialism put into practice. When push comes to shove suddenly opportunist elements of the western left don’t like the way anti-imperialism looks when it’s more than empty rhetoric… because it alienates your liberal friends, because it’s messy and bloody and dangerous, because it requires some amount of compromise, or because the “wrong people” are doing it and that doesn’t fit the idealized picture you had in your head.
These are all vestiges of a liberal idealist mentality that it seems much of the western left is not yet mature enough to have outgrown.
If that is true then Shea is wrong and should have done his research on Becker and the PSL better. But i can only judge based on what i have read and heard from them so far. If you can point me to where they say they critically support Russia i would appreciate it.
Bro it’s literally all you post about
Of the 36 posts i made over the last three months 5 have been about this rift that has developed among the western left between those who support Russia’s SMO and those who do not. This is something that is not going away, the conflict has not yet been resolved and remains topical as it relates to one of the most impactful geopolitical developments of our generation.
I’m currently on the move so I can’t currently give more lengthy response, but these are the people. There’s a growing right wing opposition to NATO, which now, might seem insignificant, but as the war drags longer and longer?
The US knows it can’t drag the war on in perpetuity, and if support falls come time for the next election, this puts Democrats in a dangerous and weakened position.
I’d be interested to see what instances you’re referring to in terms of the SU and China allying with other imperialist forces. The instances I can think, such as the Molotov Ribbentrop pact we’rent so much allying as it was a stalemate that allowed the SU to gather up it’s arms. Even then, the SU ended up going to war against those same forces, which points to the reality points to how alliances with reactionary forces is ultimately short lived and can be dangerous.
I do think that Russia plays a progressive tole in today’s landscape, but that’s different than expecting Putin to liberate us from NATO.
There’s a growing right wing opposition to NATO
But that’s not actual opposition to NATO or US wars in general. They are just opposing what the democrats are currently doing until they get elected again. These people very much want and are working towards US hegemony and open war with China, not just this proxy war against Russia. They do not want multipolarity and their appeals to Putin don’t really mean anything. They’re just part of a larger effort to be as contrarian as possible to the current democrat positions in public, while actually pursuing largely the same foreign policy as the democrats. There’s also the factor of Trump “being friends” or whatever with Putin which is nonsense, but the republicans seem to like spreading that, if nothing else, just to piss off the democrats.
this puts Democrats in a dangerous and weakened position.
I don’t really care what kind of position the democrats are in and neither should you. Both parties have the same imperialist and hegemonic policy and serve military-industrial, and other large corporation’s shareholders’ interests. The dems are not better than the republicans, and the US elections don’t really decide anything. No one in the US should be allying with democrats (or republicans or relying on elections) and expecting achieve any sort of meaningful anti-imperialist changes.
I’d be interested to see what instances you’re referring to in terms of the SU and China allying with other imperialist forces.
I’m not talking about the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, that wasn’t an act of allyship. I’m talking about the larger picture of WW2 in general. The USSR, along with the UK and US fought the Nazis in Europe, and the communists in China formed temporary alliances with capitalist/feudalist forces which were funded by US imperialists to fight against Japan.
expecting Putin to liberate us from NATO
Again, my point is that no one is actually expecting this. Maybe a few fringe voices, but its far from a real position taken by people.
So Putin is Hitler now? Have we fallen so far that we are now using the same vulgar propaganda language that the liberals use? Nazi Germany was an imperialist power and when it attacked the Soviet Union it had the backing of most of the western capitalists. Russia is NOT imperialist and it is currently one of the two biggest enemies of the western imperialist hegemony, and they are allied with the other which is a socialist state.
Of course multipolarity is not the end goal, no communist has ever said that. It is however a necessary prerequisite. All the rest of what Becker said is just waffling to obscure the main point: he refuses to support what Russia is doing because it’s a bad look in the west right now to “support Putin”. But which communist supports Putin? Fuck Putin. Every time that fucker opens his mouth to talk about Lenin he says nothing but bullshit. Of course we all wish that the communists were back in power.
But the point is that a communist should have the geopolitical understanding to grasp the fact that regardless who leads Russia what they are doing on the global stage is objectively beneficial for advancing the anti-imperialist cause and thereby the socialist cause in ALL nations - and yes, including the imperial core itself because when imperialism is dealt a crushing defeat that will open up opportunities for revolutionary action that are currently simply not there.
Unless Russia wins you will not get any kind of socialist leadership in your country, and in fact socialist leadership in the countries where it still exists may be strangled and crushed if imperialism is victorious in this conflict. After Russia China is next. And how long do you think states like Cuba or Vietnam or the DPRK can survive isolated and alone in a unipolar world?
I don’t think they’re not saying Putin is just like Hitler. They’re saying Rainer’s out of context quote implies Kim Il Sung would have supported Nazis as a power fighting US imperialism. It goes along with the logic that led the Trotskyists to support ISIS. Obviously we need to have some sort of line of reaction that cannot be supported. If there were an actual imperialist like Germany fighting the US we wouldn’t support them, but Russia is not at all imperialist so that doesn’t apply.
I really take seriously anyone who believes or pretends that Russia is communist or even remotely close to becoming communist.
Not
Communist Russia ended 32 years ago, please to be living in current century.
Who said that Russia is communist? Why does Russia need to be communist for it to be engaged in actions that are objectively anti-imperialist?
If the only two possible positions are Nato or Russia
And one favors Russia
Therefore that Russia > Nato
And if the assertion is that Russia beating Nato would mean more communism
And if the options are, again, communism or not communism,
Then, by dualist logic, Nato = not communism and Russia = communism.
Because everything can either be one or the other, using the same logic behind “Nato bad, therefore Russia good.”
Russia IS better than NATO. That does not make Russia good. But what they are doing is. You seem unable to distinguish between an action and the entity taking said action.
“The struggle that the Emir of Afghanistan is waging for the independence of Afghanistan is objectively a revolutionary struggle, despite the monarchist views of the Emir and his associates, for it weakens, disintegrates and undermines imperialism;”
- J. Stalin, The Foundations of Leninism, 1924
Was this passage saying that a monarchist regime is good? No. It was saying that the actions taken by said regime in combatting imperialism were objectively beneficial for the global struggle.
“You seem unable to distinguish between an action and the entity taking said action.”
This coming from someone who equates Ukraine with Nato, which it isn’t even part of – and manages to twist national territorial defense into global hegemonic imperialism.
You can’t tell the difference between communism and anti-Americanism. One may be the other, but A->B != B->A. So you fall in with literally anything that is anti-American, no matter what, because you’ve conflated it with “maybe communism.”
This coming from someone who equates Ukraine with Nato
Did they? I thought you brought up NATO first
Rainer Shea is a patriotic socialist who made a hard turn to condemning the PSL at every opportunity after they failed to support his “anti-war” rally with Tulsi Gabbard, Jackson Hinckle, and the Libertarian Party USA.
Brian Becker is one of the most principled communist leaders in the west, and is so frequently portrayed as a “Russian asset” by liberals that the underlap with Rainer’s claim here is just funny.
That sounds like some red brown shit
liberals call donald trump a russia asset. just because he is called that doesn’t mean he meaningfully support’s russia’s anti imperialism
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I appreciate your input.
It is so utterly incorrect as to be nigh unfalsifiable, but appreciated.
Rainer once “decolonized” a government building by raising a PRC flag over it.
His understanding got better, and then obviously far worse. What you say about Becker and PSL are simply untrue, and you can listen to any Socialist Program episode where they discuss Ukraine/Russia or read any liberationnews article about the subject as proof of that.
So this is just another one of those “sit down shut up and toe the line” paternalist screeds, then? One of those “I don’t care if these people we’re working with are known to agitate for the ‘destruction’ of your kind” sorta things? You’re sounding mighty settler-like there, homie; you know I don’t fuck with that. While I back the special operation, there is not a-- I don’t give a damn if Kwame Ture himself came back to life to up these Mises Caucus crackers, there will never be a day where I trust anyone repping RAWM to do anything more than get subjects-of-empire killed.
It must suck to be so unpopular that you have to talk about yourself in the 3rd person
Actions speak louder than words, but imo its disingenuous to say that the PSL failing to support RATWM is because of PSL disliking those lolbertarians.
I’ve spoken with Rainer about this, and while I don’t agree or like with everything he says, his point was that RATWM would expand the core message out to a broader populance, and that he doesn’t like associating with the Lolberts and likened this to the Bolsheviks working with reactionary trade unions and groups. Obviously not the same situation, but the general message is the same.
We didn’t fail to support the event. We rejected the event emphatically. It was a right-wing event.
The general message is not remotely the same. There is a difference between organizing workers in an imperial country where all non-explicitly-communist institutions are reactionary to some degree, and organizing with the fascists self-consciously responsible for making it that way. If you’re genuinely confused about that, you have a lot of reading to do, because even the democrats are better at recognizing their enemies.
The libertarian party is both fringe, and the most ideologically anti-worker organization in the US. It’s impossible to be further away from union organizing. You think they want to end the war and spend that money on healthcare for workers? They are literally repealing child labor laws. Some of them think slavery should be legalized.
You have good points in your final sentence. I was going to say that many of the audience at RATWM are probably led astray or misinformed by the establishment and not directly part of the capitalist oligarchical leaders, but now that I think about it, Tulsi Gabbard being there isn’t a great sign. You’re mostly right.
I mean, most of any audience is going to be workers, they’re 99% of the population. That’s never going to be sufficient for determining whether an action is worth supporting. This event was paid for by GOP-aligned billionaires. You couldn’t pick a less favorable environment for worker outreach. You could go up to random people on the street and ask them how they feel about the Ukraine war, and you’d have a more serious anti-war movement than this in a month.
Y’know what this is reminding me of? That time Chelsea Manning went partying with libertarians, paid for a ticket to their function, then turned around and tried to say she was ‘gatecrashing’. Got a lot of people lately who just wanna party with the enemy and try to reframe it as ‘coalition-building’.
Except that the people in RAWM are most certainly not “the fascists responsible for making it that way”, those fascists are sitting on the Atlantic Council, in the RAND corporation, at the State Department, in the CIA, in the White House, at the Federal Reserve, at NATO, and other institutions of bourgeois imperial power. What power do a bunch of libertarian nobodies have? Not to mention that reducing RAWM to just the right wingers is dishonest, afaik it’s a broad tent coalition and includes people from the left too as well as a lot of otherwise fairly apolitical people who are just sick of wars.
Of course i don’t think that the libertarians will support labor organizing or social spending. But that’s not what this is about, this is about one thing only and that is opposing NATO and the US empire’s proxy war on Russia. You can support that part without agreeing with the ideological viewpoints of everyone else in the coalition. It just comes down to whether you think it’s acceptable to put aside differences over domestic policy for the sake of preventing possible nuclear war and WWIII, because that’s where we may be heading if NATO’s escalations are not stopped.
I thought the same thing, that libertarians aren’t the most powerful group for reaction, but that doesn’t mean they are highly ideologically anti-worker and anti-communist. Libertarianism declined as a force once the rich realized they could get their same ideology in the mainstream through neoliberalism instead. It doesn’t make the more fringe form less bad.
Libertarian backers have immense wealth from both the fracking boom and silicon valley. The difference between neolib and libertarian is basically non-existent. The Libertarian anti-war stance is opportunism, and their criticism is just that their PMCs should be hired for more imperialist ventures.
Middle income Americans trend reactionary on political-economy because the bourgeois narratives work for them and their livelihood is secure, and the state does often end up helping them out.
America is an exceptionally bourgeois country, especially considering the colonial question. The proletariat is outnumbered and we really need to stop trying to pander to the settler petit bourgeoisie, they already have state power.
Libertarianism is basically controlled opposition. They’re just another far right party with billionaire backing, but they can pretend to be against the establishment because they have no hope at gaining electoral power. They can keep radlibs that might have hope of going left by talking about freedom (including social “progressivism” despite not having power to influence those issues on the right side or even trying to) from.
Yeah but their freedom slogan isn’t anything unique, it’s the core of Liberalism. The freedom slogan works for radlibs because like Libertarians they most likely lived a middle income life, which in America is very wealthy in global standards, and they only think about the state in terms of limiting their Liberty to get what they want, or not doing enough to protect their ability to get what they want.
Their overwhelming interests (needs rather than wants) are being served by the bourgeois settler state, in the same way as the ML AES’s proletariat’s interests are served by the vanguard and DotP.
I think the anti-establishment politics don’t really exist outside of the worker’s movement to take power. All bourgeois ideology is establishment.
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Multipolarity is definitely something that communists should support. Of course, it’s not the end goal, but it is a necessary step to take in order to dismantle USD hegemony and allow all nations to liberate themselves from debt traps.
The point Becker was making is that multipolarity in and of itself isn’t going to end capitalism. Only socialism can do that. Multipolarity between capitalist countries gave us two world wars.
I believe that’s what I stated. Multipolarity isn’t the end goal, which is global communism; but, it is a necessary step to take in order to reach that goal given the cards we are dealt with.
Oh I’m saying that Becker doesn’t support multipolarity per se. It’s good that US dominance is weakening, but replacing it with dominance from other countries or other blocs of countries isn’t what we should be striving for.
(though I don’t think that’s what people here mean when they say “multipolarity”. I believe we’re all in agreement with him on this one)
Multipolarity is coming simply as a part of the historical process of our development - just like feudalism emerged, then capitalism, then imperialism, etc. Empires also come and go and in their wake other countries rise - we have seen this numerous times throughout history. Yet it seems like these socialist anti-multipolarity people think we can stop these processes just by the actions of a few individuals or small groups. Not to mention the straw man argument presented where we apparently just want multipolar capitalism as an end goal and nothing else. Yes, all of us would prefer if every state just turned socialist right away, but that is not physically possible. We have to work with what we are given, and currently that’s multipolarity.
He took an exchange that probably took 2-3 minutes out of a nearly two hour long interview, and then I guess mind read the rest of his article out of that. Not worth taking seriously.
Hard pass. I 100% support Brian Becker more than this doofus
Rhainer Shea (rightfully) gets a lot of shit here, but I don’t expect this particular take to cause a lot of infighting.
This particular take is dog shit. Shea is writing in bad faith
I made this comment before you made your breakdown, and at that I had only skimmed the article. Now that I’ve seen what you wrote in another thread, I can see that his wrecking goes beyond bad takes on settler colonialism.
Substack hustlers playing armchair general since their early pandemic radicalization. Now writing about grand chessboard geopolitical multipolar line struggle.
we had a multipolar world all the way up until world war II, what did it bring us? The multipolar world brought us World War I, the multipolar world brought us World War II
I cannot believe PSL’s cofounder is equating competition between colonial empires to USA trying to subjugate Russia and China.
Or that he’s trying to push this narrative that the post WWII world was not multipolar. The only reason a US middle class was ever even allowed to exist.
Go to the 1 hour and 24 minute mark of the interview, that’s NOT what he’s saying. View my other comment.
Tbh this is on me. I should have known that a Rage Against the War Machine guy will never have a normal and good faith take.
I don’t keep up with American left political developments so it never occurred to me that people use multipolarity was a springboard for Putin worshipping.
The putin worshipping stuff is less of a development on the left imo, but something you see growing in the rightwing camp. There’s a PSL article about the similarities between the “America First” chauvinism prior to WW1 and the similarities between the same right wing opposition to NATO currently.
Shea sometimes reads like a straight up CNN article the way he editorializes 😂
I mean, he is still kind of saying that, no? He answers the question “is it good that unipolarity has been challenged?” and his answer is in essence no because it just seems like he argues against some multipolarity in general without considering the material reality of today’s world split into the west and the rest (with China on top). His answer implies that today’s multipolarity is like that of pre-WW1 which is in contradiction with his stance in general.
The question itself is problematic. What does it mean for it to be good? In a vacuum, no, multipolarity is not inherently good for the working class, and the evidence is forms of multipolarity that were bad for the working class. For multipolarity to be good, it must be inclusive of an anti-imperialist pole at minimum and an explicitly socialist pole must develop as well. Becker doesn’t say China isn’t that, but we all know that Russia isn’t socialist so it’s not enough for Russia to challenge the US. He’s correct on this. The situation is terribly fraught right now. We are all waiting to see what BRICS announces in late August and we are all watching China without making predictions or value judgments hoping that we end up in the multipolar chess board we need. Until then, focus at home where you have power.
Listen to Becker’s podcast and it becomes abundantly obvious that Shea is full of shit and acting in bad faith.
I agree that the question is problematic, but he doesn’t challenge it. He answers as if the assumption of an abstract multipolarity is valid. I think he should’ve answered concretely, in accordance with today’s material reality.
Again, I don’t care about Shea, I’m not defending him, and I don’t care what he’s saying. I’m commenting on the interview in question.
I mean, at this point, you’re just saying he didn’t answer it the way you would have answered it and that you think there’s a correct answer and that he failed you personally. Going through life like that isn’t going to lead to good outcomes. Trotsky was like that, too. Becker’s answer to the question was not revisionist, it was not imperial apologia, it was not incorrect. The logical inference we can draw from Becker’s response is that more must be done to secure the revolution, even if Russia and China are bringing about multipolarity, and this inference is correct. So you may disagree with the answer, but it leads to the correct outcome. There must be a socialist revolution in Russia at some point if the global working class is to be liberated. Just having a multipolar world replete with non-socialist powers is insufficient to the task. As socialists in all countries hear this answer, the only inference to be made is that we each have work to do building socialist revolutions domestically so that when the multipolar world emerges and as it develops, it is the workers that drive what comes next.
I mean, at this point, you’re just saying he didn’t answer it the way you would have answered it and that you think there’s a correct answer and that he failed you personally.
I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m analyzing his answer in the context of the interview and the geopolitical situation today.
it was not incorrect
It was arguably off topic and not really an answer to the specific question. The whole interview is about the particular situation today, not an abstract multipolarity. Socialism is present today, especially with China which is leading the bloc of countries struggling against US hegemony.
The logical inference we can draw from Becker’s response is that more must be done to secure the revolution
The question was whether loss of US hegemony today is good, and his answer does not lead to this conclusion. What you’ve said in the rest of your comment is correct, but it cannot be inferred just from Becker’s answer as it stops short of giving an actual judgement on the loss of hegemony in question. He talks about multipolarity in abstract and not the particular multipolary we’re getting where socialist China is one of the poles.
If his takes otherwise are good, then great. Same goes for the PSL. I’m just critiquing his answer here which seems contradictory to the rest of the interview.
as many others have said in this thread, you aren’t getting what he is saying. multipolarity alone is not the answer.
Based on the contradictory positions Becker takes on Russia compared to China, he’s probably just trying to appeal to liberals to grow the PSL. Saying ‘Russia not good’ is kinda necessary to prevent liberals from losing their minds right now. Does this stance temporarily screw up their real MLtheory? Yes. Does this stance attract more new members? Maybe.
Don’t take Rainer Shea’s words as fact. Nearly every position he ascribes to Becker and the PSL are incorrect. He’s writing in bad faith.
This is exactly the problem. It is possible that this erroneous position was taken out of opportunism, a misguided impulse to try to appeal to liberals by capitulating to the imperialist narrative on Russia. I had a lot of respect for B.B. and the PSL before this, but sadly this has undermined a lot of that. I just don’t think you can build a principled socialist movement this way. You are much better off trying to appeal to the apolitical and even the more backwards sections of the working class than to the middle class liberals who have fully bought into the demonization of Russia. More and more i am convinced that no progress will ever be made by any “radical” group in the US until and unless they have completely severed themselves from the Democratic Party.
I had a lot of respect for B.B. and the PSL before this, but sadly this has undermined a lot of that
That’s what Rainer Shea is trying to do. If you want to lose respect for the PSL and for Becker, at least go listen to several hours of their content and read the sources instead of trusting Shea.
Have they in any of those hours of content ever expressed support for what Russia is doing in Ukraine or even Russia’s actions in Syria? Because if not, i’m not interested. At this point i have personally drawn a line in my life and i have no more time for westerners who call themselves communists or socialists but refuse to support or even defend the boldest and most serious military challenge to the US’ global imperialist hegmony in 50 years. Not to mention that Russia is literally fighting against a genocidal fascist regime. The least any principled leftist can do is critically support them in that. To me this goes hand in hand with supporting the economic challenge that China’s BRI represents to the global neocolonial yoke. They can praise the USSR and talk Marxist theory all day but the bottom line is: anyone who refuses to support either of these two main pillars of modern anti-imperialism is simply not worth taking seriously as a revolutionary. Because there is no way in hell you will ever get to socialism without first defeating imperialism, and the only ones currently striking any serious blows at it are Russia and China - and as much as i love the PRC at the moment the Russians are actually doing more, they are physically fighting and dying in battle against fascism and imperialism. Meanwhile the likes of Becker and the PSL can sit comfortably in the imperial core criticizing Russia for its contradictions while they themselves opportunistically work with the imperialist murderers of the Democratic Party. And don’t try to deny it, both the PSL and the CPUSA have ties to the Democrat political machine and both have at times advocated for voting Democrat.
Have they in any of those hours of content ever expressed support for what Russia is doing in Ukraine or even Russia’s actions in Syria?
Yes, critical support. War is bad. War is hell. But Russia didn’t start the war. They go into the history of NATO, they speak to Russia’s legitimate security concerns. Becker explicitly says something like “I may not personally agree with the choice to go to war but it’s not my choice, it’s Russia’s choice to defend it’s national sovereignty against NATO which is an existential nuclear threat”.
At this point i have personally drawn a line in my life and i have no more time for westerners who call themselves communists or socialists but refuse to support or even defend the boldest and most serious military challenge to the US’ global imperialist hegmony in 50 years.
Becker isn’t a cheerleader for anyone attacking the US. That’s not his role. But he absolutely states the US should lose the proxy war, that the US is the most powerful anti-worker and anti-communist force in the world, and that it should not be defended. He also states, correctly that the US losing is insufficient for the socialist cause and if the US loses it could just result in an openly fascistic and crazed nuclear conflagration so we need to build socialism here and stop the US from destroying us all. It’s not enough for Russia to win this battle if the US just escalates to global conflagration, it’s got to be MORE than just Russia winning.
Not to mention that Russia is literally fighting against a genocidal fascist regime.
We all are, it’s called the North Atlantic. The Ukrainian state is genocidal and fascistic only through the influence and material support and cultivation of and by the North Atlantic.
The least any principled leftist can do is critically support them in that
They do. Stop listening to Shea. He’s deliberately misrepresenting this and we haven’t figured out why yet.
To me this goes hand in hand with supporting the economic challenge that China’s BRI represents to the global neocolonial yoke. They can praise the USSR and talk Marxist theory all day but the bottom line is: anyone who refuses to support either of these two main pillars of modern anti-imperialism is simply not worth taking seriously as a revolutionary.
Becker and the PSL are not sitting around talking about glorious histories. They are engaged in trying to figure out how to get more people on the socialist track and hopefully with least amount of conflagration possible, knowing full well that war will happen. They don’t shit on China, nor the BRI. To the contrary, they defend it against attack. What they don’t do is glorify it and cheerlead for it. Again, not their role.
Because there is no way in hell you will ever get to socialism without first defeating imperialism
And Becker and the PSL know that. And they also know that they can only defeat imperialism domestically, so they waste as little time as possible in trying to get Americans to support China, because it literally does nothing material. They spend half their time tearing down liberal arguments and the other half trying to paint a picture of what socialism might look like in the hopes of inspiring people to actually support a socialist party in America and take down the imperialists from the inside.
the only ones currently striking any serious blows at it are Russia and China
Which is why the PSL and Becker defend them against liberal arguments but also try to build a movement domestically so that it isn’t solely on the shoulders of Russia and China.
and as much as i love the PRC at the moment the Russians are actually doing more, they are physically fighting and dying in battle against fascism and imperialism.
We can agree to disagree here. The Russians didn’t invade Ukraine to undermine US hegemony. They invaded to protect their national security interests against a deadly encirclement. China, on the other hand, is proactively undermining US hegemony on multiple fronts simultaneously (diplomacy, industrialization, finance, currency, education, rhetoric, etc)
Meanwhile the likes of Becker and the PSL can sit comfortably in the imperial core criticizing Russia for its contradictions while they themselves opportunistically work with the imperialist murderers of the Democratic Party. And don’t try to deny it, both the PSL and the CPUSA have ties to the Democrat political machine and both have at times advocated for voting Democrat.
I have no love for the CPUSA. The PSL is currently the best option for a socialist party that I’ve seen. They’re not PatSocs, their not a voter mobilization association, they aren’t revisionists. Simultaneously, they’re not millenial/gen Z integrated - no memes, no loud calls for death to America, no cheerleading US opponents. They are sober, measured, and thoughtful.
Honestly though, I just remembered this is all so fucking silly. Becker’s show used to be on RT America before it got shutdown and he had to go to independent podcasting. Like, if you’re upset enough to not listen to some imperial core leftists, then stop listening to Rainer Shea. This article he wrote is literally trying to generate the response you’ve just had, and it’s crystal clear to me and anyone else who’s been listening to Becker and the PSL that Shea is full of shit and deliberately sowing discord.
Ok, this was a good response. I’ll take your word for it and give Becker and PSL the benefit of the doubt on this one, because i had previously only heard good things from them in the past. I still think Shea gets an unfairly bad rap on this site and for the life of me i can’t understand why.
We’re telling you why. It’s because he’s lying through his fucking teeth in a way that requires him to deeply understand what he’s doing.
Becker and the PSL need to read this
The part about the world wars is such a blatantly false analogy that i really didn’t want to believe it came from someone like Becker. Not only is the situation today nothing like the situation prior to WWI, when there was no single global imperialist hegemony and more importantly no socialist pole existed, but to claim that it was multipolarity that led to WWII really almost sounds like Nazi apologetics. If he truly thinks this way then he also thinks that the existence of the USSR itself - which represented an alternative pole of power to that of the western imperialists - was a bad thing. Also, he seems to forget that after both world wars socialism came out stronger, both resulted in the creation of more socialist states than had previously existed, and in a significant retreat of capitalism.
There is a fundamental difference between a multipolarity of competing imperialist powers and one of imperialism vs anti-imperialism. The US today simply will not allow the existence of any other imperialist poles of power, we see this clearly in how it has tightened the leash of its various vassals and made sure to subordinate Europe to its will so that it cannot ever become the independent pole of global power that the EU not too long ago dreamed of being. As such all those that are left outside of the hegemon’s control are anti-imperialist, if not through ideology then by simple necessity and circumstance. And it is only outside of the suffocating grasp of the US’s neoliberal hegemony that socialism can arise, let alone survive and flourish. It seems virtually everyone in the global south can see this, but for some reason many western leftists cannot.
I don’t want to jump straight to accusations of chauvinism but there is definitely something wrong here.
Bruh, you don’t wanna jump into accusations of chauvinism but accuse him of borderline nazi-apologetics? C’mon dude. Read my longer comment, Rainer is completely misrepresenting Becker.
Rainer Shea is misrepresenting Becker and the PSL. He’s been doing this for awhile now. Don’t read him unless you’re doing oppo research and prepared to spend hours digging into sources and proving Shea is acting in bad faith
Your actions are literally indistinguishable from those of a federal agent, except that feds are less visibly incompetent.
Fed behavior is reinforcing the western imperialist narrative on the Russia-NATO conflict under the guise of ostensibly leftist language or treating it as some kind of “both sides bad” situation.
That doesn’t make it incorrect.
(I’m also not aware the fed interpretation of the conflict is “both sides bad” so… that’s a curious thought)
Feds know they can’t convince socialists that NATO is good but it is enough for them if they convince you that both Russia and NATO are bad and that neither deserves your support.
@cfgaussian So in this logic, one is convinced that Nato is bad, but Nato still somehow wins. It wins, you see, by losing.
Man, I don’t miss arguing with fundies.
@cfgaussian You know, I just realized this is the exact same argument used against “both parties are equally bad”
That is a false analogy.
I’ve read this guy’s articles on stuff for a while but never seen anything too bad, what exactly are people’s criticisms of him?
Edit: this downvoting shit is so stupid, it’s a genuine fucking question
patsoc nonsense
Where has he stated that he supports the patsoc position?
online? i don’t use twitter anymore but i’m sure you can search who he supports and similar. read the other responses in this post
So he is “patsoc” because of who he “supports”? And who might that be and where has he expressed this alleged support? Or is it just a “guilt by association” situation?
MF really be like “Is he a “patsoc” for what he “says” or “believes in” or “endorses” or “writes about”? Or is it just a “fits the definition of the term” situation?”
I have no idea what side you’re taking but this is a great meme format
Seems to be a thing with me.
Instead of giving me flippant non-answers enlighten me: What has he said that is “patsoc”, what does “patsoc” even mean and why is it bad?
Patriotic socialism is when self proclaimed socialists say they want a socialist US with the current colonial territory and current colonial flag. They think slavery and settler colonization is over so race doesn’t matter and the white “working class” is the vanguard. They think the reactionary US “revolutionary war” should be upheld and idealized by communists. They often even uphold highly problematic figures like Abraham Lincoln and oppose those like John Brown and maybe even the panthers. They spend most of their time throwing out claims of ultra-leftism to everyone that’s not them, and start crying about white genocide the minute you bring up decolonizing or even some sort of reparations for indigenous people for what this empire has inflicted upon them. I know this from personally being involved with PCUSA for a bit, but there also other more overtly reactionary patsocs like Caleb Maupen.
From everything I’ve seen, he has a strong tendency to play “leftier than all your organizations”, every other article, specifically going after the likes of Black Agenda Report, the Black Alliance for Peace, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and at least a half dozen others; especially after the majority of them said ‘lmao fuck that’ to the prospect of aligning with the Mises Caucus. He’s petty, and he only seems to get pettier with each article.
I don’t think he’s a paid for federal opp, but he absolutely is still some flavor of opp from where I stand regardless.
Thanks for the explanation, I’m always wary of white people when they try to criticize colonized people’s work. Not that there aren’t criticisms to be made, but too many times it comes off as thinly veiled chauvinism.
yup, 100% right. these orgs are failing people by trying to appeal to democrats by staying meaninglessly “anti Putin”. you don’t have to get any false ideas about him to ACCEPT he is acting against u.s. imperialism and that’s good.
It seems to me that multipolarism is all well and good.
But campism ain’t it.
Define campism.
