I’m not sure if you meant to reply to me, but I will respond to you nonetheless, since you appear to respond to the points I mentioned in the other comment, and because I think these discussions are very useful to other communists who reads the comments. I want to first of all, address this excerpt:
Edit: @OP I’m not mad at you, I hit reply to the wrong post. 🙃
I hope you understand that any disagreement comes from a place of honesty. I am not even Statesian, and while I am white to Brazilians, I am seen as “Latin American” by people from the North. In Brazil, white supremacy is not even close to be the omnipresent ideology like in the US, though it is still a bit present. I have no affiliation with white identity, nor do I have any interest in preserving it, much the opposite, in fact. This may seem irrelevant, but I want to be as transparent as possible so as to avoid confusion and anger.
My opinion is from someone who has never touched foot in the US, even though I am somewhat familiar with the country because your eccentric bourgeois culture imperializes every other nation on this planet. Hence why I am very open to changing my mind. However, if this discussion makes you mad, I won’t engage with you further, because that’s a sign something, somewhere, is wrong.
If white people in the US were capable of revolution, they wouldn’t have disappointed Lenin.
Can you elaborate further on this? What are you referencing, specifically? And what makes you associate the failure of revolution with the white identity on the US? The majority of countries did not achieve a socialist revolution yet, and especially the countries in the North. The labor aristocratic nature of the North Atlantic countries makes difficult to organize against the system which benefits these workers, even if they are not even aware of it. Since there’s little to “complain,” there is no reason to revolt. But workers in the South largely haven’t achieved a socialist revolution, too. This cannot be necessarily the only explanation possible. In any case, you mention “disappointing Lenin.” Did Lenin expect anything different from the US? (sorry, not aware of that, asking so I can read further on it)
Read Gramsci, whose works attempted to diagnose the failure of communism in fascist Italy.
I never studied Gramsci, what work are you referencing? I definitely want to check it out.
Have you ever spoken with a black american? Have you had even a taste of the lives they live and the struggle of fighting state-sanctioned violence every single day? Do you know how many white people are apathetic at best and complicit at worst to this issue? Do you think a people who can be so oblivious and complacent to the suffering of those who often live within a few blocks of them have what it takes to form an internationalist and anti-racist coalition?
I haven’t spoken directly with a black Statesian, but I’m very aware of the conditions of treatment of black people in the US. The Black Lives Matter revolts, the cases with George Floyd, Rodney King and LA riots, the lynchings of the 20th century, the racial segregation, the massive incarceration of black people, all of this shows there is massive oppression of blacks in the US. My grandfather was in the Brazilian army and he traveled to the US with a black friend, he used to tell us stories of how atrocious was the treatment of black people in the US, how people would harass him and his friend just because he was black. Besides that, I follow radical accounts on TikTok and here and then the question of race in the US was addressed, where the subjective experiences of black people are shown, also I’ve watched that film Get Out movie by director Jordan Peele, while it is fiction, it accurately captures the sense of terror that is being black in the US around white people.
But I realize that I have no idea what this apathy of white people is like. I have no idea how white people are not affected if they see uncalled aggression next door, happening a few blocks to them. The only thing that I imagine wouldn’t move someone was white supremacist ideology like this shit, influenced by these fascist ideologues. Not even those liberal so-called “leftists” are moved by stuff like this? But if white people have what it takes to form an anti-racist coalition it was proved through practice, through the outstanding organizing work of comrade Hampton in the Rainbow Coalition.
Here’s my understanding, and again, I openly accept that I might be wrong. White people are not born racists, this statement is obvious for any Marxist who at least has begun to understand historical materialism. We are determined principally (though not solely) by our social environment. For these complacent white racists pieces of shit to exist, there must be an ideological reproduction of racist subjects. How I interpret Hampton’s famous quote of “fighting racism with solidarity” and his work in the Rainbow Coalition is that the objective of every revolutionary is to educate subjects, so that the racist subjectivity is fought, and a subjectivity is formed based on solidarity. Racism is a major issue that revolutionaries in the US should deal with, and it’s not above nor below class, but side-to-side. The class struggle, however, should be the guiding and uniting spirit of this effort. The leadership of oppressed nations and ethnic groups should be promoted, and the alliance with whites is a possibility, but full leadership of whites should be rejected at all costs.
This is precisely the reason why Hampton was murdered, and the Black Panther Party was destroyed with so much desperation and use of lethal force that the FBI killed this leadership publicly, with national news coverage, and later tried to resolve the PR aspect of it, ultimately failing. This act was so atrocious it prompted people to spontaneously organize an activist group called “Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI” which confiscated documents from the agency which first revealed to the public the existence of COINTELPRO, a FBI program to surveil, sabotage, incriminate leftists and spread disinformation to hamper organizing activities.
Fred Hampton and the BPP has shown through example that this is the direction forward. It worked, it was only stopped because the leadership was assassinated. But if this prompted the FBI to act in such a disastrous way, it is likely the way forward, a reminder of Mao’s teaching of taking good note when you are attacked by the enemy, it means you are in a good direction. The Rainbow Coalition managed to organize people from various backgrounds: the poor whites, the blacks, the indigenous peoples and Hispanics. It wasn’t fighting fire with fire, it was fighting fire with water.
This convo is happening in two places, so I’m going to focus on the other one, except for two points:
The basic premise of Gramsci’s theory on Hegemony is that colonial powers bribe the proletariat and use cultural norms to convince their own citizens to consent to their own oppression. Yes, white proletarians are oppressed, that is not in question. What is in question is their ability to recognize and respond to this in a way that is not simply reaction.
As far as the Lenin thing, Lenin actually had a lot of faith (at least in some of his speeches) that the growing labor movement in the US would succeed in bringing about the Revolution if it could align itself with the Comintern. Books like Settlers and Hammer and Hoe go over in detail how American labor movements ran into friction with local populations and within the American Left itself, ultimately weakening itself to the point that capitulation was inevitable at the start of the Cold War. A more robust party could have weathered the storm. But American socialists simultaneously couldn’t prevent factionalism and outright racism from splitting the movement, and consistently received pushback from a liberal population that was resistant to change, particularly during the era when FDR’s reforms improved material conditions for tradesmen and landowning farmers.
I’m not sure if you meant to reply to me, but I will respond to you nonetheless, since you appear to respond to the points I mentioned in the other comment, and because I think these discussions are very useful to other communists who reads the comments. I want to first of all, address this excerpt:
I hope you understand that any disagreement comes from a place of honesty. I am not even Statesian, and while I am white to Brazilians, I am seen as “Latin American” by people from the North. In Brazil, white supremacy is not even close to be the omnipresent ideology like in the US, though it is still a bit present. I have no affiliation with white identity, nor do I have any interest in preserving it, much the opposite, in fact. This may seem irrelevant, but I want to be as transparent as possible so as to avoid confusion and anger.
My opinion is from someone who has never touched foot in the US, even though I am somewhat familiar with the country because your eccentric bourgeois culture imperializes every other nation on this planet. Hence why I am very open to changing my mind. However, if this discussion makes you mad, I won’t engage with you further, because that’s a sign something, somewhere, is wrong.
Can you elaborate further on this? What are you referencing, specifically? And what makes you associate the failure of revolution with the white identity on the US? The majority of countries did not achieve a socialist revolution yet, and especially the countries in the North. The labor aristocratic nature of the North Atlantic countries makes difficult to organize against the system which benefits these workers, even if they are not even aware of it. Since there’s little to “complain,” there is no reason to revolt. But workers in the South largely haven’t achieved a socialist revolution, too. This cannot be necessarily the only explanation possible. In any case, you mention “disappointing Lenin.” Did Lenin expect anything different from the US? (sorry, not aware of that, asking so I can read further on it)
I never studied Gramsci, what work are you referencing? I definitely want to check it out.
I haven’t spoken directly with a black Statesian, but I’m very aware of the conditions of treatment of black people in the US. The Black Lives Matter revolts, the cases with George Floyd, Rodney King and LA riots, the lynchings of the 20th century, the racial segregation, the massive incarceration of black people, all of this shows there is massive oppression of blacks in the US. My grandfather was in the Brazilian army and he traveled to the US with a black friend, he used to tell us stories of how atrocious was the treatment of black people in the US, how people would harass him and his friend just because he was black. Besides that, I follow radical accounts on TikTok and here and then the question of race in the US was addressed, where the subjective experiences of black people are shown, also I’ve watched that film Get Out movie by director Jordan Peele, while it is fiction, it accurately captures the sense of terror that is being black in the US around white people.
But I realize that I have no idea what this apathy of white people is like. I have no idea how white people are not affected if they see uncalled aggression next door, happening a few blocks to them. The only thing that I imagine wouldn’t move someone was white supremacist ideology like this shit, influenced by these fascist ideologues. Not even those liberal so-called “leftists” are moved by stuff like this? But if white people have what it takes to form an anti-racist coalition it was proved through practice, through the outstanding organizing work of comrade Hampton in the Rainbow Coalition.
Here’s my understanding, and again, I openly accept that I might be wrong. White people are not born racists, this statement is obvious for any Marxist who at least has begun to understand historical materialism. We are determined principally (though not solely) by our social environment. For these complacent white racists pieces of shit to exist, there must be an ideological reproduction of racist subjects. How I interpret Hampton’s famous quote of “fighting racism with solidarity” and his work in the Rainbow Coalition is that the objective of every revolutionary is to educate subjects, so that the racist subjectivity is fought, and a subjectivity is formed based on solidarity. Racism is a major issue that revolutionaries in the US should deal with, and it’s not above nor below class, but side-to-side. The class struggle, however, should be the guiding and uniting spirit of this effort. The leadership of oppressed nations and ethnic groups should be promoted, and the alliance with whites is a possibility, but full leadership of whites should be rejected at all costs.
This is precisely the reason why Hampton was murdered, and the Black Panther Party was destroyed with so much desperation and use of lethal force that the FBI killed this leadership publicly, with national news coverage, and later tried to resolve the PR aspect of it, ultimately failing. This act was so atrocious it prompted people to spontaneously organize an activist group called “Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI” which confiscated documents from the agency which first revealed to the public the existence of COINTELPRO, a FBI program to surveil, sabotage, incriminate leftists and spread disinformation to hamper organizing activities.
Fred Hampton and the BPP has shown through example that this is the direction forward. It worked, it was only stopped because the leadership was assassinated. But if this prompted the FBI to act in such a disastrous way, it is likely the way forward, a reminder of Mao’s teaching of taking good note when you are attacked by the enemy, it means you are in a good direction. The Rainbow Coalition managed to organize people from various backgrounds: the poor whites, the blacks, the indigenous peoples and Hispanics. It wasn’t fighting fire with fire, it was fighting fire with water.
This convo is happening in two places, so I’m going to focus on the other one, except for two points:
The basic premise of Gramsci’s theory on Hegemony is that colonial powers bribe the proletariat and use cultural norms to convince their own citizens to consent to their own oppression. Yes, white proletarians are oppressed, that is not in question. What is in question is their ability to recognize and respond to this in a way that is not simply reaction.
As far as the Lenin thing, Lenin actually had a lot of faith (at least in some of his speeches) that the growing labor movement in the US would succeed in bringing about the Revolution if it could align itself with the Comintern. Books like Settlers and Hammer and Hoe go over in detail how American labor movements ran into friction with local populations and within the American Left itself, ultimately weakening itself to the point that capitulation was inevitable at the start of the Cold War. A more robust party could have weathered the storm. But American socialists simultaneously couldn’t prevent factionalism and outright racism from splitting the movement, and consistently received pushback from a liberal population that was resistant to change, particularly during the era when FDR’s reforms improved material conditions for tradesmen and landowning farmers.