It’s fascinating to me how the same people who like to do purity tests for China or Vietnam claiming they’re not actually communist are also the ones who’ll defend places like US or Canada saying yeah it’s not perfect, but it’s the ideal of the system that matters.
It’s such an incredible example of cognitive dissonance. These people able to recognize that their own system doesn’t live up to the ideal they have in their heads, but still treat it as a valid interpretation of the idea, but when it comes to a system they dislike then the same logic doesn’t apply all of a sudden.
What’s weird to me is that China and Vietnam’s turn towards a market economy is usually framed as a betrayal, especially by other socialists. The way they portray it, it’s as if the CPC or CPV are secretly neoliberals behind closed doors. All the debate over reforms in either country was apparently just an insincere and cynical grift. You’d think listening to these people that China and Vietnam didn’t lift millions out of poverty through their economic policies.
It’s especially baffling since we can look to the USSR where the revolution and working classes were genuinely betrayed. The net consequence was a massive decline in living standards for working people. That is decidedly not what happened in China and Vietnam.
I get the impression is that what it ultimately comes down to is that admitting this requires also admitting that better things are indeed possible. The whole mantra in the west is that yeah shit sucks, but everything else is worse, so let’s not rock the boat too hard. Hence, most of the western left is invested in reformism. Admitting that China or Vietnam actually work the way it was intended means having to accept that ML approach was correct all along, and that western left has shat the bed.
I do suspect that part of the problem is better things are not currently possible in a western context. As such, the western left finds itself searching for that one weird trick which will spark off a revolutionary movement. This search inevitably leads them away from historical materialism and towards idealism.
I do think this may be a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy though. Since people feel that better things aren’t possible they’re not trying to work towards them. If we look at the way the right has been organizing, it’s pretty clear that there are a lot of people who are disillusioned with the western political mainstream. These people could be educated and recruited into a communist movement if there was active organization happening. The main problem that I see is that a lot of people on the left are rejecting effective methods for building a movement that have been proven in the past as being authoritarian.
Occupy Wall Street comes to mind. It’s like a natural demobilizing ideaolgy that grows in reaction to neoliberalism. People get focused on grassroots and bottom up approaches, which makes sense and is necessary. But then they get taken over by astroturfing because their leadership is basically unofficial and nothing more than a friend group that got their first. I’m looking at you David Graeber (RIP). And now the whole “99% vs 1%” rhetoric is all but entirely used by the right wing.
Exactly, and the sad part is that all this is just a rehashing of the exact same arguments that happened at the start of the 20th century. You can pretty much take what Lenin said in What Is To Be Done verbatim and it’s still just as relevant today.
Yeah, it’s the whole spontaneous movement thing people have been peddling.
I agree to some extent. However, the flip side of the coin is that great organizers often burn themselves out and then stop organizing altogether. I’d much rather western communists take things slow and organize more sustainably. The alternative is to maintain revolutionary optimism even in non-revolutionary times. Unfortunately, I think that’s just a recipe for burnout, idealism, and opportunism.
Yeah, sustainability is definitely an important factor. I think at the stage we’re currently at, education is the most important thing people could be doing. I kind of see it as an inoculation campaign. Once you get people to understand the actual economic relations they’re subjected to and how they relate to the political system, then they become largely immune to capitalist propaganda. The more people we can get immunized the better position we’ll be at when the conditions are right.
Oh! I think this might be a good explanation for a lot of the western left. Revolutionary movements are hard, and arguably they are the hardest in the imperial core. So it can often feel hopeless, but if those other socialist countries “failed” then it isn’t so bad, because hey, everyone sucks at revolution, not just “us.” And if there is some magical “universal” solution that will always succeed, even better, we can just do the one special thing that always works.
I’ve been thinking about “hope” and the western left a lot lately. A lot of the western left, like most people in the west, are constantly downtrodden and have their self-esteem torn apart by the system. And unlike libs who don’t even notice this breaking down and just purchase the next distraction to ignore it, the western left are aware of how the system tears people apart, but feels utterly hopeless and trapped within it. So a “perfect” solution gives them what they sorely need: Hope.
Unfortunately, revolutions are not won on hope, but on pragmatic action. But I think there are a lot of reasons why the western left tends to fall for idealism a lot. (And that’s ignoring the elephant in the room that actual materialist communists are targeted by the state, while idealists make excellent controlled opposition.)
It is always very strange. They attribute an almost lib-like mentality to these reforms. Treating them like evil Deng or Le Duan took over the country and forced them to stop being socialist, and everyone just…went along with it. Denying these nations agency or looking at their actions in the context of the time. They just act like Deng woke up one morning, rubbed his hands together cackled evilly about how he “must destroy that gang of four, and their dumb dog too!”
They are really hooked over the weird idea of “hiding the power level”. For them, socialist governments consequently realising plan of building socialism are the hidden neoliberals, while succdems like Bernie, consequently participating in imperialism and neoliberalism are real socialists who only wait for finally being in power to suddenly push the communism button (and they also accuse us ML’s of being “blanquists”).