yellow sweater woman calls this guy a liberal while outlining she believes political movements start with a secluded bunch of great man nerds who generate big important ideas from thin air
He's one of the slightly more tolerable versions of libertarian. He did write long things on how the current American healthcare system sucks for non-rich people, and how national borders should be entirely removed because freedom of movement benefits everybody and increases equality.
Clearly naive like all libertarians (ie thinking a bourgeois "first-world" nation would ever implement open borders), but seems to at least have some care for your average human.
Yeah, saying that about Marxist-Leninism in particular is pretty wild, given that the amount of deviations that are possible within ML thought because of it's fairly organic nature. Not that tax bracket stuff is not a severe deviation from theory.
"people are less likely to read the original stuff, and it becomes clear that part of the original work is simply wrong"
(a) hexbear is running a Capital book club at this very moment (b) Marx was right.
Mighty Weinersmith, from a liberal perspective, deals a killing stroke to DSA's North Star caucus and possibly Pete Buttigieg types. I'm quaking in my boots
Socialism has largely stalled at social democracy in individual pre-industrial countries, unless they have then proceeded to rapidly industrialize. The only place where it is making significant material progress is that which has largely turned the power of the state towards the facilitation of the global market and stayed out of global affairs (I.e. China, Vietnam). While it certainly is AES, it is in fact following a more strictly economical orthodox historical Marxist path than previous iterations of ML or MLM thought.
Essentially, Marx is and was right, the problem is how can we get the places where the radicalized populations are also the industrial proletariat, essentially how do we solve Lenin's problem of the core and periphery. And in that column, since the collapse of the USSR, we have yet to actually see the real success of socialism and communism, a world not dominated by capitalist markets, and for that to truly happen, the global industrial proletariat has to become organized. Unfortunately, Trotsky was right (even if his other ideas, if implemented would have been suicidal for the USSR at the time).
Socialists have won great victories, the fact that 40 hour work week is even pretended to be standardized is a great victory for socialists, but the spoils continue to go towards the liberals, because progress is not going to be a straight line, but a constant struggle. What we do, for sure, know is that despite liberal pleading, this is not the best possible world, better and more humane outcomes and ways of organizing capital and labour are absolutely possible.
Yea feel like it's largely just because if people said what we should actually do to the rich they'd be banned anywhere that had a policy of non violence.
I literally never met someone who called themselves an ML who didn't advocate for an actual revolution of some kind. ML organization also doesn't allow this to happen, since you have to subscribe to the party line and actually take courses on Marxism. This comic makes no sense, it's describing a different kind of person who wouldn't want to call themselves a 'Marxist-Leninist' anyway.
I've only met one person who's called themselves a communist who didn't quite know what it meant. The way they'd phrase it was "I'm the most liberal person I know. I'm more liberal than communists." But when he'd talk about policies he wanted they were very standard libertarian things, actually.
There are also Caleb Maupin and that Haz guy. Both claim to be Marxist-Leninist and both are more like weird American chauvinists. Ask them to describe what capitalism is and they'll give you an antisemitic conspiracy theory
I really don't get the joke. I'm not sore or anything there's plenty to poke fun at about us, but what exactly is the premise of this joke?
M-Ls don't read theory? Is there a branch of economic thought that reads theory more?
Is it important whether part of the originating theory is "simply wrong"? Marxism isn't the exegesis of religious texts, it's a dynamic practice, a lens that is constantly updated with new additions and vigorous debate.
Are people who claim to be Marxist-Leninists not actually Marxist-Leninists?
IDK honestly this just reads more like what a lib assumes MLs must be like, because they can't fathom people might actually genuinely believe we need to liquidate the ownership class so we must all be posturing.
I'm assuming that this is poking fun at radlibs cosplaying as marxists while only advocating mild reforms in actuality (Jacobin etc.) I doubt Weinersmith knows any actual ML's.
The fact people here are acting like this is an attack on actual MLs and not recognizing it as shitting on radlibs who call themselves communist is weird, it seems pretty clear cut.
The other day I saw an "anti-authoritarian" internet anarchist shitting on trade unions in response to a recent wage increase for Ben and Jerry's workers. It's like these folks got an addiction to being useful idiots.
This is what happens to movements that are all theory but no practice. Practices forces you to iron out the specifics and to focus on the goal. If you're just left to academic pondering, then things become more abstract the longer you go without having to actually make it work.