He seems to be one of the most hated figures on the online left. From my view, he does have a lot of questionable takes, but also does bring up some good points when it comes to fighting imperialism from a leftist perspective, so I’d like to know what people in this community think about him.
I used to be on the fence about Caleb, giving him the benefit of the doubt. I thought, maybe he does the whole “patsoc” thing simply to try and give socialism a broader appeal to the American working class, and not because he actually supports imperialism and genocide. Maybe he met with Dugin just as a show of solidarity with Russia, and not because he actually agrees with his bizarre fascistic philosophy. But then I saw his anti-semetic book, and it removed all doubts. In it, he makes the classic fascist move of taking problems caused by capitalism and blaming them on Jews instead. He seriously tries to make an argument that the 2008 housing crisis was brought about by a Jewish conspiracy. It sounds like some straight up nazi shit. He is a fascist.
Wait, what do you think he said wrong in the first video?(TW, imperialism and labor aristocracy). I thought that was a pretty good take…
Denying the existence of a labor aristocracy, imperial chauvinism, telling ppl not to read settlers. Typical imperial core leftist crap.
He doesn’t deny the labor aristocracy. The labor aristocracy is a tendency of the working class in the imperial core who are bribed by imperialists with super profits. Bribing striking workers to keep the machine going. But unions and the labor movement are completely dead in this country. There is no need to bribe anyone. It would just be a waste of money, because no movement in the US poses any threat to power. So why would the labor aristocracy continue to be the prevailing tendency?
It’s just defeatism. Living standards are falling. You can see signs of a revolutionary moment everywhere. Occupy wall street. BLM. The trucker convoy. But they are disorganized and confused. It is the failure of communists to lead them. Because western communists are excusing their own failures to make headway with the working class they just dismiss them as labor aristocrats.
Labor in the global north goes further in buying food, fuel and other needs. Labor aristocracy isn’t limited to just unions. It is by definition part of the imperialist system that labor is stratified.
I don’t deny any of that. I’m just skeptical of “Today, the working class of the imperialist countries … is entirely labour aristocratic.” from Zak Cope, what @muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml linked
Labor aristocracy has a really simple, technical ( let me stress not moral ) definition. There is a global price of labor power, what we call the cost of social reproduction. Right now ˜ $1.50 / hour.
ILO statistics
Just how much more are imperial core workers making? As of 2007, according to the ILO, 11x more.
If you make more than PPP $1.50 / hour, or ~$250 / month, then you are in the minority of the world’s workers.
Also, remember that western finance capitalists aren’t paying for southern labor in PPP dollars, they’re paying unadjusted wages, so the surplus value extracted is much higher. Southern workers are working using highly mobile, 21st century capital equipment, while being paid wage levels from the 1800s.
Inflation-adjusted Average Wage Rates for male workers in 2007 _ Monthly wage for OECD workers $2,378 Monthly wage for non-OECD workers $253 Hourly wage for OECD workers $17 Hourly wage for non-OECD workers $1.50 Factoral Difference between OECD and non-OECD wages 11 Median Global Hourly wage $9.25 If there was no labor aristocracy, there would be no imperialism.
You can see mini labor aristocracies arise in any factory, store, or office that pads out its labor force with disposable temps and seasonal workers (ie. pretty much every business bigger than your local bookstore). The temps gut the permanent workers’ ability to halt or slow production, while the permanent workers usually have a bit of an adversarial social relationship with temps as a group. Permanent workers build up a kind of chauvinism that’s actively working against their own interests. This doesn’t even go into the friction between desk workers and floor workers in the same building (but appears invisible when offices are in a separate building despite being very real), nor the conflicts of interest between highly paid specialists and the low-wage departments that support them. And managers are often ghoulish in temperament despite being exploited themselves with working long hours on a salary.
Even going back to the classic Leninist interpretation, companies in the global north bully their suppliers in the global south all the time. Not just verbally, but in offloading costs or refusing payment for defects that are inevitable at their negotiated pricepoints and engineering specs.
Because western communists are excusing their own failures to make headway with the working class they just dismiss them as labor aristocrats.
I’d argue quite a lot of the more vocal western leftists are unwittingly labor aristocrats themselves and fail to see why their privileged perspective doesn’t mesh with the experiences of workers who experience the most drudgery. I’ve personally been around quite a lot of people working shit jobs and they don’t think like western socialists at all, including Maupin.
I’d argue quite a lot of the more vocal western leftists are unwittingly labor aristocrats themselves and fail to see why their privileged perspective doesn’t mesh with the experiences of workers who experience the most drudgery.
The difference is I don’t pretend to be working class. Maupin doesn’t claim to be working class for all I know. Many of the bolsheviks were not working class. Marx and Engels were not working class. So why try to smear someone for not being working class? Also, the labor aristocracy is a tendency of the working class, not a separate class. A labor aristocrat is still working class.
I’ve personally been around quite a lot of people working shit jobs and they don’t think like western socialists at all, including Maupin.
The objective of communists is not to think like people working shit jobs. The objective is leadership. I wouldn’t expect communist leaders to think like someone who works 60 hours a week. I would expect them to think within the framework of dialectical materialism.
I think I’ll just let this post speak for itself.
The objective of communists is not to think like people working shit jobs.
There is a recording of Divided World, Divided Class on youtube by dessalines, I do highly encourage you to read it.
To give a simple analogy, lets compare house and field slaves, and see how they correlate to imperial core (largely service economy) workers and global south proletarians.
House slaves: Do not produce commodities for the market. Produce use values (meals, clothes, clean house, etc) that are immediately consumed. Lives off the Surplus value created by the field slaves, that the slave master apportions for them. Very small numbers compared to field slaves. While still being slaves, live an undeniably easier life than field slaves. Cannot really be a revolutionary group, since they do not control production. Many of them actively fight to maintain field slavery, since their lives are supported by field surplus.
Imperial core workers: Do not produce commodities, mainly just put final touches, branding, or do maintenance and services for the commodities produced by global south proletarians (GSP) . Much fewer of them than GSPs ( I think there are 5x more GSPs) , so its easily possible to pay them superwages out of the surplus value / superprofits created by GSPs. Undeniably live a better life than the average GSP. Many fight to preserve imperialism, knowing that they derive existing benefits from it. Revolutionary potential very debatable, since they do not control production, or produce commodities ( what imperial core country has had a revolution so far? Imperialism exports revolution and quells it at home).
Dude wants you to be open minded and read Dugin but denounce settlers and fed jacket the author smh.
Imagine telling people not to read an obvious CIA psyop.
Obvious? Prove it or don’t mention it.
Rule 3, be respectful, or both of you will risk a ban or temp bans. @ComradeStalin@lemmygrad.ml
Hmmm I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that a completey anonymous man with a P.O box down the street from the CIA headquarters wrote one of the left’s most divisive books. 🤔🤔🤔🤔
Oh wow SUPER “”“obvious”“”“”
Tell me why is it that people who say this can’t engage with the book without strawmanning it?
I was on that position as well, since I wasn’t aware of his antisemitism and connections with nazis. I had seen a lot of people accuse him of being a nazbol, but I didn’t know he was that bad…
He’s basically a Nazbol apologist
This this this
I came in here to locate the nazbols, and I am so pleasantly surprised to find none. Well done Comrades! Stellar answers! Thank you for not filling this sub up with the settler apologia we have to fight on Reddit! <3
Like Jordan Peterson, he’s great at making privileged white boys feel special.
deleted by creator
reactionary inflitrating communist spaces. these people must be rejected.
there is a subset of self-professed socialists for whom the existence of trans people is the primary contradiction and base all of their organizing and association around that principle.
When you hear these people use woke, it only means one thing: A lot of them don’t feel comfortable admitting this yet but it’s basically the cornerstone of the “patsoc” worldview. “We just want to appeal to Americans as they are” is a scapegoat for their own biases.
Far from rejecting idpol, they’re deeply obsessed with it.
Its a great point that the patsoc types are actually entrenched in idpol. IMO its a difficult thing to parse out and properly organize but people like Maupin are overconfident and underinformed at best.
I mean im happy to be critical of Amerikan civil religion, idpol and liberalism and how it chokes out revolutionary processes, but some of the voices involved in this conversation are arrogant and bigoted. “Woke” is often used to only point the finger at “”“left”“”" idpol, but never mentions abortion, patriotism, or heternomativity in their assessment of civil religon.
When this happens I can only assume “woke” is now an anti-Black, anti-queer dogwhistle. They also like to say that Land Back is a corporate scheme to get land for billionaires. They know nothing of the discourse around treaties and they dont give a shit. They disqualify themselves from the conversation yet they gain followers in the process. How convenient for white supremacy. How glorious for capital that Maupin exists and is even supported by people even here.
For anyone out there that supports Maupin and the rot he represents, grow up. We live in perilous times where every single worldview hangs by a thread and clumsily moves along with nothing more than a candle in the dark. We will not be forgiven for listening to snake oil salesman. We will hardly make it out of this even if we listen to the best of us but you do worse than hold us back by holding on to grifters like Maupin or Coffin when we have alternatives like Vijay Prasad, Nick Estes, and others. The natural world thrives on mimicking what you want to hear to lure you in and consume you and it is no different with ideology and propaganda.
He’s a reich-wing grifter that eventually need to be walled.
Isn’t he the American patsoc that got embarrassed publicly by CPUSA at an international meeting with various communist parties across the world (including China)?
Please tell me there’s a video
I think if you look up CPUSA internationale meeting 2021 you’ll find it. CPUSA is near the end
someone got a link please? Couldn’t find it
deleted by creator
I dont trust him.
Is he the antisemitic Larouche guy?
Is the LaRouche connection confirmed? Maupin would have been an excellent member of the US labor party.
I used to like a lot of the shit he said, but his followers are kinda nuts, and he has a lot of fucking annoying shit regarding patriotism and nationalism and how much he loves America and ugh. Definitely on the edge of social chauvinist at the very best.
Yeah, I’ve heard him say some stuff sounds good, and maybe hot take but I think he has a point about dressing well if you’re actively involved (but I don’t think this should automatically mean suits), and then he suddenly calls Ben Norton a fake communist that opposes a multipolar world? Like I’m not even sure how he arrived at that?? And I saw possibly the most cursed infographic ever, it was a chart listing the contributions of Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Caleb Maupin to the new tendency of Marxism-Leninism-MZT-Caleb Maupin Thought, which was described as encompassing literally everything and Maupin’s contributions were things like “read” and “there are historical trends of raiding and city building”…
I think you’ve got him right. He has some good takes but a lot of incredibly bad takes and poor judgment. It would be a terrible mistake to allow him to take a leadership position in a broader coalition or look up to him as a model.
Hear me out. So that third position shit didn’t work out so well, but have you considered doing the fourth position?
he’s pretty much just a reactionary social Democrat from the looks of it. also he believes the CIA funds breadtube and vaush which I find hilarious
Out of all of Maupin’s views to contest, such as the absurd idea that waving an American flag will bring about socialism, why do you take issue with the idea that Vaush might be CIA backed? It’s not that ridiculous given CIA’s history as well as history of other US intelligence agencies (for example, the FBI seems to like supporting anarchism and Maoism), and Vaush supports US imperialism 100% of the time.
I don’t take issue with it I just find it funny. I admit I don’t know if vaush is cia backed
Fair enough. Granted, given the nature of the CIA operating covertly and all that, it can be difficult to prove any connections beyond a shadow of doubt, but it’s definitely something I wouldn’t dismiss out of hand due to the many instances in which we do know about the CIA supporting pro-imperialist media sources, including many that pose as being on the “left”.
unfortunately there is nothing hilarious about it, although we are more talking about the NED in fact and its many subsidiaries who run 10.000s influencer campaigns all over the world, many of which are normal influencers who get co-opted over time. and later down the line “help with scripting & editing” which, knowing the grind is more than half the work - amping your quality, and all of it perfectly anonymized behind the plausible deniability of patreon and youtube donations, beating the algorythm too quick or outright just teenagers on the drip… many of them don’t even know they are part of it because they have so internalized an image of how the media landscape is supposed to work and look that they wouldn’t even dare to think there is something fishy behind all the helping hands, the donations, the visibility, the community coherence e.t.c.
I mean just look how they testran this #stochasticterrorism bullshit with Pewdiepie by coopting him through this audience (of who i can guess a whole bunch of active members to be NED(and other) influencers and contributors and their troll armies & botfarms trying to hack the statistical algorythm that is pewdiepies personal information and perception echo chamber. He was one of their best vehicles of spreading awareness about rightwing influencers TO KIDS. same with Joe Rogan (of which it should be clear, that his funding comes form mafiose rightwing extremist and old condor assets (fertitas, sheldon adelson, irish mob, brasilian mobsters&fascists))
So why is it so hilarious to think they woulnd’t co-opt your favorite Breadtuber through their times of need?
he is on the money on this one
Caleb is a fasc cringelord, but from looking at a lot of the very specific things he’s being slammed for by people in here, it looks like unfortunately even on this website there are a lot of users who glow in the dark :/
The narrative managers always wanna kill the story where it evolves. as such they will send their agents of bioluminescence to clog the well where it starts to develop a current. Certain mechanisms prevail. Same with music platforms, either they allow themselves to be coopted or they can have a war with industry lawyers over copyright trolling. it’s just a question of time until the hard core is separated from the weeds and usually structures don’t hold against institutional power
still: lets have fun with it as long as we can.
