Excellent article. I hope this is widely circulated in western leftist and communist circles, because I have seen way too often well-meaning but severely misinformed comrades parrot the talking point that the PSUV should not be supported because some Venezuelan communists said so.
As we all know, just because someone calls themselves a communist doesn’t mean that all their takes are automatically correct, or that they are actually on our side. You have to pay attention to what people do and who they align themselves with more than what they say or claim to be.
If you see “communists” align themselves with right wingers and imperialist proxies against an anti-imperialist government, even if said government is not necessarily a socialist or communist one, alarm bells should start going off and having you question what their real agenda is.
Marxist arent not symbolist but actionist. CPUSA calls themselves communist too but most western leftist know that they are lying lol.
If you see “communists” align themselves with right wingers and imperialist proxies against an anti-imperialist government, even if said government is not necessarily a socialist or communist one, alarm bells should start going off and having you question what their real agenda is.
11 months ago I mentioned that there were two PCVs -> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5309060
The interesting part is that the “PCV” that backs the rightoids didn’t appear in the ballot box as PCV but as Centrados. Fun part of all this is that their candidate worked with the FBI -> https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6701152
For me, this is a good lesson that the imperialist will continue to divide movements from within. COINTELPRO lives on.
Yeah for a while the only people I ran into who understood the situation were the ones spreading disinformation abt it and being suspiciously aggressive. :/
Thanks for posting this great article, man. I always appreciate people learning about Venezuela.
Thank you based Western Marxism by Losurdo poster
Hahaha, there was another one recently about Western Marxism from Losurdo, but I didn’t post it, it was from the International Manifesto Group and Friends of Socialist China. It should be on Friends of Socialist China’s YT for any comrades interested.
Really need more like those two + Critical Theory Workshop
Yeah, I love Critical Theory Workshop, too.
Related: have you read Back to Marx + A Deep Plough by Zhang Yibing by any chance? I’m alarmed that the only people I know for sure have read it are Gabriel Rockhill, one of the Hegelian e-girls (if you don’t know trust me better off that way) who was absolutely butchering it, and people I’ve nagged to read it for montha bc it’a very good. If you’ve got time read Destruction of Reason by Georg Lukács as well as Blood In My Eye by George Jackson. It’s an important niche of writing because it helps people figure out what they should not be reading (low use value). If there were half as many Marxist critics of this stuff as there are mediocre Keynesian critics of neoclassical economics it would at least be a little easier to find people to coordinate research with
I haven’t read those, and thankfully don’t know about the Hegelian e-girls, Hahaha. I agree, that there’s a lot of pseudo-theory out there because of bourgeois academia where like Gabriel often says, it’s like every academic has a product to sell; the new, hip theory that’s dressed up as ‘‘radical’’ but upholds the status quo.
Thanks for the book recs, I’ll write those titles down and look for 'em.
It comes up with unbelievable frequency because the first reaction from radlibs or unequal exchange nerds to hearing from a dependency theory based perspective of international relations that actually incorporates debt and institutions instead of just particular trade metrics -something more than the boring Mearsheimer tier shit - is to accuse you of being ACP/MWM shills or Russia/Dugin agents (reflecting the Russiagate obsession with him as “Putin’s Rasputin”). Crazy bc in that situation I’m not the Heideggerian calling for the worship of the US reactionary working class + petty boug + labor aristocracy + national boug & tailism for a US political party it’s them. These parties have huge overlap with the alt media and the larouche ppl
Disturbing how social media has churned out these people who immediately associate antiimperialist analysis (usually from writers in the global south & in the same tradition) with insane reality show heel characters they heard abt from streamers who feed them right wing ragebait 24/7. It comes up too often it’s creepy. Robert Evans and Zizek stans crawling out of the walls at any opportunity. Whatever at least people stopped talking abojt the stupid Hegelian e-girls
For books you want https://annas-archive.se/ they also mirrored & continued the now frozen scihub btw
