With the recent victory of Mamdani, I thought about sharing this video by Marxist-Leninist content creator Jones Manoel.
The whole video is in portuguese, but the automatic subtitles from youtube are pretty good here, with a few exceptions like getting a few names wrong and confusing “Hollywood” with “Dutch” for some reason.
Still, comrade Jones take seems pretty solid to me. He’s skeptical of Zohran’s actual power to enact any meaning change in NY, while also acknowledging the historical significance of his win as a Muslim and Palestine supporter, specially because it happened in the heart of the empire.
He also throws shade and criticism towards China and Vietnam in regards to the Palestinian genocide, which I think are well deserved, and since he is someone that constantly studies Brasil, and talks primarily to a Brasilian audience, he also talks about it in the context of the video.
What do y’all think about his take?
No, that’s not what I am saying here.
I’m saying if someone who call themselves marxist lives in a country that does not have a dictatorship of the proleteriat then speaks of an actual DOTP is not doing enough against a genocide, and feels that was important enough that something should be done about it and then fails to do anything meaningful in that direction to agitate said foreign country then they have a geopolitical theory for which there is no meaningful praxis ie idealism.
If someone feels so strongly about China, and feels that such actions are important for China to take they then should organise around it.
I’m not sure how many different ways I can say the above.
It is a failure of marxists to postulate theories without praxis, it is the vestiges of liberalism that they should let go.
Let’s make the abstract concrete, so it doesn’t feel like I am talking past you, let’s walk this through (this will inevitably sound patronising in this format of a thread but it may be useful if anyone was lurking around), so let’s start with the first step: why haven’t you (or pick someone else for this example so it does not feel like a personal attack) organised around China’s supposed lack of action (please don’t say anything that will identify you)?Again you assume we can just pressure China into doing something, when I have more than once stated that China is not internationalist at this time. Why is it so hard to admit that China, as Marxists should just be helping Palestine more? It should not take other Marxists pressuring them to do that.
So, exactly what I said. At the end according to you, WE are at fault for China not being internationalist with Palestine, so the problem is not their stance, the problem is that we disagree with that stance and since we can’t change it, we are at fault. It makes absolutely zero sense, AGAIN, it is excusing China and shifting the blame on the powerless. Besides, saying China, a Marxist-Leninist state is not internationalist and not doing enough for Palestine is geopolitical theory and therefore we are idealists because WE can’t change how China acts? There’s is just no way.
What theory? Doing one tame criticism of China is not the same as postulating theory. We are not analyzing China and trying to understand why it is not internationalist and trying to learn from their experience, we are simply saying, THEY SHOULD help more as a Marxist-Leninist state.
I’m sorry but I’m done with this discussion. I have reiterated the same points and explained the same things over and over again and I don’t feel like doing it anymore, I’m disengaging.
So you have… material constraints… where you have to make strategic concessions… despite a genocide.
Idealism here is waving angry fists at clouds and considering what pretty much about amounts to debate-bro non-actionable “arguments”, and then saying that counts as marxism.
The hubris to consider that a country with about 100 million party members have not considered the implications of what actions to take and not take is unbelievable. From people who have achieved far less. Idealism is probably an understatement. The CPC have material constraints - of which their decisions from that may not be to our liking when it less than utopian ideal in our heads - but like I said we are meant to be dialectical materialists.
This really isn’t that hard. And this isn’t even a defence of the PRC. It’s an attack on liberal idealistic thinking.