To defeat the state, we in the core of imperialism need to make U.S. hegemony too weakened for our ruling class to be able to use it to hold back revolution. And to cripple the beast by attacking it from within its heart, we need to take away the social base Washington depends on to be able to maintain its global war machine; that social base being the U.S. working class.
Nothing is wrong with that in general, but who is he saying it to? Who are these people that only want multipolarity and simp for Putin? His call for socialism is good, but ignores the material reality of today’s world in which new socialist construction is not possible without first the decline of US hegemony.
I don’t like Shea and think he’s quite problematic, but your comment about what Kim is saying is, I think, not a good portrayal.
The USSR and China did ally with other capitalist and imperialist forces against Japan and Germany in WW2. And today’s world is largely split into two camps - the US and China. Critical support given to Russia (which while being reactionary still currently plays a progressive role globally in the struggle against US hegemony and is allied to the world’s socialist countries, though only out of necessity) is not the same as “supporting Hitler”. Putin and Russia today are not equivalent to Hitler and Nazi Germany.
As Losurdo puts it:
Brian Becker and the PSL critically support Russia. Shea takes the critical part and makes it seem like Becker is a “Russia bad” commentator. He’s not. Don’t listen to Shea talk about Becker. Listen to Becker directly and form your own opinion. When you do, you’ll see Shea is dangerous.
I do not totally dismiss much of Shea’s writing, yet this is wrecker behavior. Anyone who listens to what PSL is actually saying knows they are not against multipolarity, they’re the only prominent Amerikan communist organization even tackling its importance!
I don’t take anything Shea says at face value. I’ve listened to the part of the interview in question and find Becker’s answers to be weird and contradictory. As I’ve explained in another comment, he answers the question “is it good that unipolarity has been challenged?” and his answer is in essence no because it seems like he just argues against some multipolarity in general without considering the material reality of today’s world split into the west and the rest (with China on top). His answer implies that today’s multipolarity is like that of pre-WW1 which is in contradiction with his stance in general.
He’s answering the question. Multipolarity, in a vacuum, does not immediately lead to socialism. Socialism must be present along with multipolarity.
He’s waffling and refusing to give a clear answer, and the only correct answer for a socialist to give is: yes, because without the defeat of the unipolar US hegemony socialism cannot arise or thrive anywhere.
Dualism isn’t dialectic, it’s a patently blatant fallacy.
There’s more than two sides to anything.
Eating the horse to catch the cow…
Meaningless word salad. Give me a clear answer: how can socialism arise let alone survive anywhere in the world today so long as the US empire, unless challenged in the way that Russia and China are currently doing, is free to use its global reach and all military and economic power at its disposal to strangle any nascent revolution in its infancy and slowly ratchet up the suffocating pressure on the remaining AES states? What other alternative is there than for some state or states to take the fight to the empire and actually hit them back and weaken them the way Russia and China are currently doing?
Please, if you know one, tell me of a practical path to revolution and socialism in a world where the US empire reigns supreme.
A lot of leftists like to talk about anti-imperialism in the abstract, but what Russia and China are currently doing is anti-imperialism put into practice. When push comes to shove suddenly opportunist elements of the western left don’t like the way anti-imperialism looks when it’s more than empty rhetoric… because it alienates your liberal friends, because it’s messy and bloody and dangerous, because it requires some amount of compromise, or because the “wrong people” are doing it and that doesn’t fit the idealized picture you had in your head.
These are all vestiges of a liberal idealist mentality that it seems much of the western left is not yet mature enough to have outgrown.
Please tell me you don’t really believe those genocidal libertarian hard-c crackers are actually anti-imperialist; as opposed to using a cute little photo op to launder their reputations. If that’s really what you believe, you’re more lost than I ever thought you to be. It is not compromise to work with the genocidal, it’s actively endorsing suicide.
I don’t believe that they are, no, i think they are a mix of delusional idiots, contrarians and cynical opportunists. But results matter more than motives, and i see that they are among the only ones actually agitating against NATO and against the war and actually gaining some traction among the population. And i see that there are some sections of the left, such as the PCUSA, that have made a judgement call that it is worth to piggyback on this despite the contradictions present. I would love nothing more than to see a popular leftist movement against NATO and against the lies and propaganda that the West’s support for this war is predicated on, that way there would be no need to share a platform with reactionaries. But instead, much of the western left has chosen to side with the imperialist position on this conflict in order to stay in the good graces of the liberal establishment, and are doing so under the pretext that to support Russia or to refuse to support Ukraine is tantamount to siding with reactionaries.
Instead of attacking those who reluctantly piggyback on the libertarian platform because they have nowhere else to go if they want to be anti-NATO, why doesn’t the part of the left that is also critical of NATO build its own platform for this purpose? This is a rhetorical question because i know the answer: the left isn’t given the same freedoms and leeway to be critical of the liberal establishment that the right is. We have already seen communists persecuted and jailed for taking a pro-Russia stance. Unfortunately this is the environment that exists in the imperial core today, and it is in no small part being enabled by the more opportunist elements of the left which have chosen to side with the imperialist narrative and demonize pro-Russian communists as “tankies”, “patsocs” or “Putin puppets”. This leads some of us to conclude that, however distasteful it may be, the only choice that anti-imperialists have left is to use these dubious platforms because that is the only way to get the anti-imperialist narrative out to the people.