Sup comrades, I was at a decently sized protest today and this Western Maoist lady came up to me and some other comrades and immediately started ranting to us about Ukraine, Russia and our org’s position towards them. Russia is imperialist, China is imperialist, yadda yadda, you know the drill. “It’s so important to discuss this question these days”
You know what? It’s fucking not. Our enemy is at home. The Russian comrades - the Russian people have to figure out the question of Russia. Whether Russia can be called imperialist in the Leninist sense is entirely irrelevant to our praxis at home. Endlessly wanking ourselves off about this question does nothing but distract us from building class consciousness at home. Being a good, brave purist and fractionalizing due to muh Russian imperialism does nothing to aid or guide the working class. Bourgeois media does a good enough job talking about this anyway. It is nothing but a convenient excuse for people, especially non-communists, to stay home and not fight the real enemy here, in our communities. It does nothing but distract us from fighting NATO, demanding peace and fighting the MIC at home. It’s a pointless, masturbatory exercise in liberal individualism to make dogmatic fuckers feel smug about themselves.
“B-but Mao said, b-but Lenin said, b-but Liebknecht said”
First, I don’t give a fuck, think for yourselves, adapt theory to changing material and historical conditions and direct it in a way to advance the cause of the working class. The Russian question has literally no impact either way on our strategy at home and in our specific localities. Call for peace, that’s it. Second, if you want to refer to Liebknecht, he said it best: The main enemy is at home.
“Why don’t you demand x, y and z of Russia”
Because I’m a Germany communist in a local org and I’m neither chauvinistic enough nor do I suffer from Main Character syndrom to such an extent I’d demand anything from a country like Russia. How fucking deluded are these people? The 2 communist parties in Germany have about 2k members each, it’s fucking pathetic and delusional for any of these fuckers to demand anything from a country of almost 150mio people. Wasting our scarce energy, resources and human potential on shit like this is counterproductive at best, subversive at worst. Shut the fuck up, sit your ass down and organize your community, school, uni or workplace in a meaningful way. If you want to have discussions like this, have them behind closed doors with your comrades at chapter meetings and stop annoying people organizing and taking to the streets in real life every chance you get.
Fuck me, I’m tired of this sectarian bullshit
PS
Just to be clear, I’m mostly venting here. Discussions about theory are important and I believe there is a need to talk about the concept of imperialism, but not everywhere all the time and especially not as priority #1 ffs
I completely agree with your point here. The first priority of leftists in the imperial core should be opposing their own government and their own capitalist class, not criticizing other countries. But also, Russia is not imperialist, it is semi-peripheral. It does not fulfill the economic criteria to be labeled imperialist, nor does it have relations with the global south that can be called imperialist. In fact - like China - it does the exact opposite, namely help developing regions liberate themselves from the yoke of neocolonialism, much like the USSR supported anti-colonial independence movements.
There have been plenty of resources linked here such as videos and articles about this very topic.
Despite some shaky statements made by our party I am glad that there is rarely any focus on Russia within the party or at the actions we organize.
Like you said, discussion is important but many Western orgs are in no relevant position to have any strong demands or opinions on the matter lol. Even our Belgian marxist party with 30k members, being one of the larger parties in Western Europe I think, is in no place to judge Russia imo. Instead, we should look at our own country and see how we have endless money and weapon streams going into Ukraine, landing in the hands of literal Nazis. Or how we cannot heat the homes of millions of people due to a privatized energy sector. These are the more important things.
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