Trump’s dying. He needs the Peace Prize for his ego and 2025 might have been his last chance. Not even the FIFA peace prize can make up for that. /s
This sort of fascist “infighting” might actually be helpful insofar as it makes the imperial aspirations blatantly obvious even to supporters of Machado and the like. In the end, it might turn those supporters against the US invasion as well.
Only a balkanised imperial core is a good imperial core. /s
Probably not the right time yet, as the core is still strong enough.
I think the basic question is how can we mobilise more masses and prevent the right to constantly co-opt our topics and use it for their own agenda. Or: How to praxis?
All good, never mind
Can we use idealist vehicles to teach class consciousness? Punctual and guided agitation in idealist realms to capture the interest for those falling out of the mainstream?
Dan Wang recently gave an interview to a German rag of a newspaper. He talked about why China is so much ahead etc. (Wang studied in the US and went to a neolib think tank afterwards), how China builds bridges, parks, metro lines and so on. The German journalist literally asked “But at what cost?” And Wang started going into financial details. He was then asked the obvious “at what cost for freedom”, but still, was funny to read.
And so we march into our demise with theory-purity, selling Trotzkysit newspapers and educating everyone so they have a degree in ML, whether they want or not (if they don’t want, they are not worth it I guess) because we’re too good to meet the masses of the proletariat where they are.
What you’re “assuming” is your own reading into the topic. If many people have the right feeling to get out of the EU, we shouldn’t be arrogant and not meet them where they are but join them and then teach them why the right-wing is based on fiction and lies.
Because what were doing right now in Western Europe obviously doesn’t work. Or did I miss the mass demonstrations of communists (not leftists) lately? Isn’t it dogmatic to say we should keep doing what doesn’t work?
So, a Frexit, just differently. That won’t confuse the ordinary prol.
I largely agree with you and I think this entire discussion comes down to praxis. Let me please provide my thoughts below. Happy to see your thinking and keep the exchange going.
Anyone who doesn’t see Class as the primary contradiction is not a leftist.
That would currently be 95+% of Germany, including much of the “Die Linke” in Germany.
There are many small regional cultures in Germany but there is no unifying culture, apart from maybe Vergangenheitsbewältigung.
Again, fully agree here and we see how the Vergangenheitsbewältigung is being distorted by capitalists against Palestinians and anyone criticising Israel in general.
The tactics of marxism change but the strategy and goal never does. A cultural taboo can change in less than a generation, there is nothing permanent in culture. The culture of Germany will not shed capitalist ideas until generations after the revolution. You cant do things the other way around because the capitalist control the intellectual and cultural means of production
If the tactics of Marxism change, why not exploring the idea of applying Marxist praxis in the direction where we speak the language of the proletariat? If we can’t raise class consciousness (unless I’m mistaken here, but for Germany this is definitely not the case.), neither can we do it through culture, then how do we get people mobilised?
Germany is very far from proletarian revolution and it has a severe deficit of class consciousness like all western nations. You don’t counter that by choosing to foster false consciousness because that will end up with a false revolution like the 3rd reich.
A Devil’s Advocate would say what have been tried by communists in Germany, or the capitalist core, doesn’t work, either. Trying to raise class consciousness is apparently not working and if this was the solution, then you are going right with the “Die Linke” who advocates for educating the masses only and is becoming something like the Greens were 30 years ago. By those standards, we always lose against capital, cuz they dictate what people learn. Again, being the Devil’s Advocate, Lenin would still wait for the revolution if he wanted to raise class consciousness only.
We do need to reach out to workers but we don’t do it by indulging in nationalism or identity politics.
Of course, correct Theory, but how does that look like in praxis? Because currently, the right is wooing the proletariat into their arms, not the left. And using culture as a vehicle to educate and mobilise people can be a valid way, many socialist countries did and still do that.
Even the program of the KPD in 1918 talks of culture twice (https://www.marxists.org/deutsch/geschichte/deutsch/kpd/1918/programm.htm). One example being in their very first paragraph, as “cultural duty”: “On November 9th, workers and soldiers shattered the old regime in Germany. On the battlefields of France, the bloody delusion of Prussian saber-wielding world domination had crumbled. The criminal gang that had ignited the global conflagration and driven Germany into a sea of blood had reached the end of its rope. The people, deceived for four years, who in the service of the Moloch had forgotten their cultural duty, their sense of honor, and their humanity, who had allowed themselves to be used for every atrocity, awoke from their four-year paralysis—before the abyss.”
it’ll take me like 2 pages of essay u want me to point out the 20 000 elephants in the room???
Yes
So you’d march together with the reactionary far-right to leave the EU, but then have a banner saying “We’re different cuz we’re better”?
They might say “I hate the rich” then follow it with “because they are all jews trying to genocide the whites”
Which is exaclty the point of saying they are one inch from the truth. They point out what is going wrong and arrive at ludacris reasons and solutions from that. But they do point out that they “hate the rich”.
The rest of your comments in general is just ragebait.
GDR was the last structure to try to reinvent it
Funny enough, the GDR had the “Kulturbund” which openly celebrated German heritage with slogans like “defense of culture is the defense of peace”. It was openly neutral to any party and openly anti-fascist.
I wonder, if socialist countries in the past, with the CCCP on the forefront, openly celebrated the cultural heritage of the proletariat, why shouldn’t we be able to do something similar, applied to today’s perspective. If the proletariat yearns for the past in the imperial core because the upheavels of capitalism are so hard to bear, why should we speak a language different to them? Why shouldn’t we celebrate regional cultures especially in the core, and make it openly antifascist? Sometimes it sounds like that the proletariat in the core is not being exploited as well.
Many voters of the AfD are not ideological Nazis, unlike their party members. But they need a mental or ideological crutch to help them bear the suffering under capitalism. In Germany’s West, the church is the crutch, in the East, withouth religion largerly, it is the Nazis because they provide the “roots” and the cultural cohesion that people need to a degree.
Obviously, as Marxists, we understand the differences and nuances of what “culture” provides. And we don’t have to say “After Hitler, us” but rather: “Look, we can also provide culture. We are also the proletariat, just like everyone else. We also like to sing songs and tell history as is, from a dialectical perspective, and we can be proud of the various German revolutionaries in feudalist times, etc.” So that the German proletariat can be proud of something and has an alternative to turn straight to fascism when they want to feel patriotic.
Leftists understand that the primary contradiction is class.
Then you don’t know the German left unfortunately.
People are reactionary to start with they don’t turn reactionary.
That is debatable and depends a lot on the “nurture” aspect of an individual or society.
There is no german culture without white supremacy christianity and capitalism because germany is only 150 years old.
There is a strong regional culture in Germany that can be better used and is currently exploited by the right to woo people into their arms. Culture might be an ever changing thing but so is Marxism cuz it’s not dogmatic. And if culture is ever changing, then it can shed its oppressing weight of Christianity and Capitalism as well.
I think Germany is very far away from their class consciousness to be raised. And if someone tries that a bit, like the left party at the beginning of this year, they turn into a very “perfomative” left idealism shortly afterwards that further alienates Marxists. If we as Marxists in the West - who very rarely every “studied” Marxism as someone in the CCCP did or currently China or other Marxist countries did, but only read some books and got together in spaces like these - want to get out of our big heads and ivory towers, we need to actually speak to the proletariat in their own terms and language. And culture, traditions, “going through the motions” are sadly a great way to do that because we’re humans and because the proletariat is reactionary currently.
Great collation of how the EU is anything but free from fascism.
Especially the last point opposing the UN Resolution shows which direction the EU is heading.
And please, for the love of people with more than 2 brain cells, no more verbatum texts from Kallas. That reads like a Trump speech.
Just like r/BalticStates
It is russian funded. Russians are everywhere. Last night, Putin was under my bed. Oh no, wait. That was Hamas. And Al Qaeda is building rockets in my bathroom. /s
Classic boogeyman tactics to further divide and conquer, winning elections on fear, tightening austerity, etc.
I read somewhere that the Sahel Cooperation States (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso) want to finally create their own currency. Hope they will achieve it.
a lot of people have formed strong emotional attachments to the EU’s mythology as a result
To the extent that they defend it in every topic they come across. From Moldova to the pig lobby in Denmark and homelessness in between. Discussions about the EU starts to show signs of religious fundamentalism.
Additionally, she became the President of the EU Commission without being voted in. Was on no list, but became the President. The perfect figurehead for the EU indeed.