StalinForTime [comrade/them]

Tbh, I’m not really sure what point you are making here (not trying to rude, so please feel free to clarify what the argument it).

Nowhere have I claimed that the Palestinian cause is tainted. Because I do not equate or identify the Palestinian movement with Hamas, and to do so is an external perspective.

You are correct that Israel bears ultimate responsibility for this. Yes the most important thing is that they stop the occupation. That’s not what this is about. Nor is it a judgment on the Palestinians or other Palestinian groups for feeling that they should, or have no choice but to, join a common front with Hamas. This is about perspective so that people don’t suddenly make the, frankly, stupid move of suddenly speaking of Hamas as if they are simply a progressive force. This is about recognizing that Hamas, precisely in virtue of who and what they are, will not be the ultimate force of Palestinian Liberation, and that in fact their interests are antithetical to it. The other groups also despise Hamas, and it’s important to ask why (not that they are necessarily great themselves). Because make no mistake, it is far from a given that these groups, let alone Palestinians in the West Bank or who are Arab Israeli citizens, are necessarily happy with this. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem also to be making the slip between ‘Hamas’ and ‘Palestinians’, when they are very far from the same thing. Do you think that every single Palestinian in Gaza is happy when they hear that Hamas has launched a new attack? It’s not that simple, even when, as we’ve seen, right now we see there is a display of general support among key groups, though again groups like the PA are also corrupt and do not speak for all Palestinians. But this is also as much a matter of maintaining legitimacy, because Hamas is dominant in Gaza and because now that Israel is launching a brutal attack and that it looks like they could be launching larger scale genocidal actions, especially once their military is more fully mobilized and they launch a ground operation into Gaza, there is naturally going to be a rallying against Israel, and that is justified, morally and politically.

Hamas were aware that that would happen. Hamas are perfectly aware that when they launch these kinds of attacks (made possible and caused ofc by Israel in the grand scheme of things), and Israel then attacks Gaza, this galvanizes support for them. Hamas are a product of Israel in more way than one. Also, and again, and I can’t stress this enough, as Islamists their political interests are not in the construction of a broad, radical, working-class movement which would launch another Intifada and force international powers to force Israel to a negotiating table to allow for a Palestinian state, as even if such a state were to be ruled by a national bourgeoisie, that would be preferable for the construction of Palestinian socialism to what they have now. Personally, i too would like a single, secular, state, but I also feel this is pie-in-the-sky idealism. Israel will never accept that, and neither will their imperialist backers. Nor will they accept a two state solution, as we know from their decades of sabotage of such an option. This is where my pessimism comes in, as the heydays of the secular Palestinian left of the 60s and 70s is gone, Israel is becoming more fascist by the day, and the main vehicle for armed opposition to Israel is Hamas. So I don’t see how this doesn’t even catastrophically. I don’t really see an opening for the left, except perhaps if a Palestinian left finds an opportunity to take prestige from Hamas, though the strength of religiosity makes this difficult, as does Hamas’ Islamism.

I feel like this is a point to try again to dispel some illusions some people are clearly in when they compare Hamas to groups like the ANC, the Vietcong. If anything they are like the FLN in Algeria. Now the FLN were completely fucked, vicious, ruthless and deeply reactionary, but they at least were attempting to construct a national bourgeois state with nationalist perspective and policies. I don’t think Hamas are even trying to do that honestly in that their s’ils seen broader. And even if they were, they are not the ANC or the Vietcong, who were genuinely progressive movements of national liberation.

And again, it’s amazing to me that self-described communists are able to make the obvious realization that if ostensibly ‘communist’ groups like Sendero Luminoso or the Khmer Rouge, even when fighting anti-imperialist struggles (complicated in the case of the Khmer Rouge as they were supported clandestinely by the US for geopolitical Cold War reasons) or at least struggling to overthrow their national bourgeoisie, engage in widespread indiscriminate atrocities against civilians, then their communism or status as a progressive force is compromised. Or to give another example: just because I support (or would have supported) unequivocally the Soviet struggle against Nazi Germany, would never in a trillion years say that the mass-sexual violence which occurred during the Soviet invasion of Nazi Germany was justified. That would be beyond depraved honestly, even though I understand that the men who did it had seen their country and families obliterated in the most depraved ways themselves. But revenge is not the basis of politics. That doesn’t mean it’s not always justified or permissible (like concentration camp survivors killing their guards), but I really don’t see how this is equivalent to killing children or unarmed workers intentionally.

Of course this situation is the result of where Palestinians have been pushed by Israel over the last 80 years. And yes. Intellectually I understand that. But that just a description. It’s not immediately a justification of anything. Nor does it establish by itself what the progressive form of political organization. For that the material conditions and the nature of the possible groups - such as Hamas - then has to be considered. I’m sure that if I saw my child die in front of my eyes due to an Israeli bomb, which I’m blessed enough to not have experienced, then I would want to do some pretty terrible shit to these people. Israeli guards and soldiers, when torturing Palestinians, have been known to joke that they’re like the Gestapo. It’s no surprise that this breeds desire for extremely violent retaliation. But jumping from that to what I’ve seen some people saying, namely ‘anything goes, the babies/kids have it coming’ or that that is politically or morally justified is a completely illogical leap no matter which way you spin it. And frankly that should be obvious. That is not a guide to thinking about what kind of political organization in Palestine is going to lead to Palestinian Liberation. In any case, I’m pretty sure that it’s not Hamas.

By-the-bye, the South African government did engage in militaristic repressions of its population, massacres, forced displacements, ethnic cleansing, torture, rape, terror, slavery. There was armed resistance, but the form this took was very different to Hamas. It was based on progressive movements, whereas Hamas is not.

Also, this is not a question about violence as such. Violence is necessary for the revolution. I wish it wasn’t but it is. When a Palestinian kills an Israeli soldier attacking their home, my heart cheers for them. But that’s not the same thing as an Islamist militant taking someone’s children hostage and raping and murdering the women. Hamas would cut our heads off in a heartbeat. And this is not an idle point that’s somehow irrelevant in some grand geopolitical third-worldist strategy. They are Islamists. They do not care about our revolution and their success, even Thinking the political math is that simple is naive. If it weren’t, then groups like the Khmer Rouge would have been justified. This is not an idle or moralistic point because not all forms of organization or methods are politically equal. Not least because the moral qualities they have does affect how politically effective they are going to be. The indiscriminate killing of unarmed women and children is not going to serve the cause of Palestinian Liberation. Now on the one hand I admit there’s a sense of comeuppance to the blowback Israel is seeing, such as at the attacked rave. The rave, with plenty of well-off Israelis who live off the fruits of apartheid, rolling on ecstasy next to an open-air prison camp - from which, apparently, the rave’s music could actually be heard - is obviously completely depraved. But this is cruel emotion of mine. Not a guide to politics or ethics.

This is also because the apartheid government caved under not only international but more important domestic pressure as they were perfectly aware that there would be civil war and mass bloodshed if they had not given in to reforms and the end of apartheid. It’s not clear what would have happened otherwise if, for instance, they had doubled down or intensified the apartheid system with even more extensive fascistic slave-labour in the 80s. As South Africa had an economic model that was descended from the settler-colonial plantation system, as seen, and utilized extensive unpaid (effectively slave) labor, it’s not unimaginable that if they’re pushed the system deeper then there would have been far more retaliatory bloodshed.

Indeed.

But the ANC and Hamas are not similar at all.

Hi comrade. Not coming at you personally or aggressively but I feel I do have to come back pretty hard on this take.

The same words can be used in different contexts with different implications, and in the one case they can be correct, in another they can be wrong. The difference which makes your analogy not hold is that the ANC is not Hamas, and pretending otherwise is either confused or disingenuous. They are extremely different organizations. The ANC was a broad-tent organization that included conservatives, nationalists, reactionaries, and revolutionary socialists, notably communists (especially in the armed wing). The armed wing did carry out military operations obvs, but they did not have as a common or explicit policy the indiscriminate torture of unarmed children or torture. They never carried out actions like Hamas has done. Not least because they were sufficiently progressive to recognize that this would politically idiotic, given that the anti-apartheid cause was perceived as depending on foreign pressure on apartheid SA. It seems clear to me that the same applies to the Palestinian case, thought the problem if ofc that the situation is so fucked that the main organization capable and willing of waging armed resistance would not only be terrible for a Palestinian left’s growth in the long-run but could also lead to a regional destabilization which would be harmful for the left in the region more broadly and would likely only benefit Islamists. The actual idea situation would be another leftist-led Intifada, but this has been prevented by Israel, but is also not in the interest of either Hamas or the PA, as it would undermine their authority and power they possess thanks to Israel in Gaza and the West Bank respectively.

By contrast, Hamas are very different. The is evidence for Hamas being the way they are has been there since their inception. They are Islamists. They are extremely fascistic in their politics. They explicitly equate Jews and Israel frequently in their media and they are otherwise clear in their genocidal anti-semitism. Murdering children in their homes is not national-liberation. I’d also add that Hamas are not identical to Palestinians and their actions are not immediately identical with, though they are unfortunately the main military vehicle currently available for, the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Not only that, but Hamas have consistently proven throughout their existence that they do not desire full Palestinian liberation, otherwise they would not have run affairs in Gaza (to the extent they are able in an Israeli open-air concentration-camp) the way they have. This is in no way surprising, given that the interests of Islamists are no less inimical to those of actual working class and liberation movements than fascists and ultra-nationalists, though the latter might also find themselves in the inferior position in asymmetrical warfare with an imperialist power and at the military head of the movement against said imperialism.

Quite frankly, it is an insult to the South African liberation movement to equate them with Hamas, as opposed to the genuinely progressive aspects of the Palestinian liberation movement.

I do think it is important to note these profoundly reactionary aspects of Hamas, otherwise we end up with a blinkered, confused view of what is happening, which is not simply reducible to Hamas being or leading a progressive revolution in Gaza. That in no way changes the fact that the mass of Palestinians who are taking part in these operations are attempting to combat Israeli apartheid and genocide and defend themselves. They evidently feel they have no other choice. But neither does the latter point make Hamas a progressive organization who should be explicitly supported as the solution to Palestinians’ oppression.

The right and need of Palestinians to depend themselves does not, however, in any way imply that every organization that happens to be the means they can do it through now is ideal, good, progressive, or that that will benefit them in the long run. Palestinian Marxists and other groups have found themselves in a situation where they feel they have no option or choice other than to form a front with Hamas in this. The deeper reasons and processes that led to that decision are not entirely clear from outside. We can unequivocally support Palestinian liberation and their self-defense while recognizing that Hamas is otherwise reactionary and therefore will not be the ideal vehicle Also, frankly, I’m never going to support an organization that tortures gay people and throws their Marxist opponents off of rooftops. Unfortunately I’m a pessimist on the front of how the political situation will develop in the long-term as I think the situation’s possible developments are going to be catastrophic in any case, given the genocidal nature of the Israeli apartheid state, how profoundly reactionary Hamas are, and that the material conditions do not allow for the strength of a Communist movement. That would require more ideal conditions which are not to be found in Gaza, and I also don’t think will be brought closer by this current round of war. Israel does of course have ultimate responsibility for this as the genocidal apartheid occupying power, but reaction can bread reaction.

Not all national liberation movements are equal. Not all methods are politically or morally equal. People on this site seem to be able to make this realization in several other cases, such as with ostensibly ‘communist’ groups like the Khmer Rouge and Sendero Luminoso, yet unable to consistently make the same obvious realization in the case of groups in the middle east who’s interests are opposed to those of Western imperialism. There’s a deep and hysterical need among a lot of the western left, not only including but above all among those who are not Marxists but ultras of various types, to unequivocally identify Hamas with the Palestinian people and the cause of Palestinian Liberation with anything that Hamas does, which is a really bizarre and honestly perverse (especially in its reduction of Palestinians to Hamas) form of metaphysical argument by semantic shift of the meaning of the words being used, to make something appear to imply something which it actually does not.

The slightest glance at the history of the relationship of the USSR to national liberation movements makes clear that serious and intelligent socialists of the past who have actually held political power and had geopolitical relevance were perfectly aware that not all national liberation groups are politically equal. Their support was never unconditional, because they were not ultra edgelords on the internet. They were a serious geopolitical power with a specific socialist ideology, and their support was therefore conditional on there being a minimum of progressive aspects to the movements they supported. Of course, this did lead to cases of of questionable or debatable support (such as the Guomingdang or the Derg), and the case is even worse when we consider the CPC’s foreign policy. But that these were mistakes (if they were) is made clear by how they contradicted with the socialist principles which were explicitly underlying them in the minds of socialists politicians who determined foreign policy.

IMO, the Egyptian state’s interests, as any local corrupt power run by a national bourgeoisie and military state apparatus, are determined by their perceived geopolitical interests. Given how developments in Palestine can catalyze domestic politics, and given that Egypt does not want to have to deal with millions of refugees, it’s not a given that they are going to get in the way of Israel bombing the crossings and blocking entry and exit of Gaza in general.

Yh a lot of mfers on this site need to actually read some theory.

Yes I’m aware that’s what you meant but that has nothing to do with my point and affects it in no way that you are expanding a definition in a way that has normally only been done by the right-wing, for obvious reasons (Elon Musk loves hammering this point).

• “What I mean to say is that in a market system the rational behaviour is to seek to maximise what you get for what you give. Anti-competetive practices are simply the logical way to behave in such a system. Trade unions do aim to use market forces to gain for workers an advantage and that is a good thing.” Sure. Up to a point, but you are assuming an understanding of rationality that is perfectly consistent with the neoclassical and neoliberal view of the world. The rational interests of the working class are not limited to restricting their behaviour to maximisation of their income in a private labor market.

• “The market isn’t fair and it never has been about fairness.”. Yeh. Sure. Who said otherwise?

• “deally we wouldn’t have a market system but while we do it makes no sense for the workers to not try and get ahead in it”. Up to a point, sure, except exclusive focus on this has historically and inevitably led to economism and reformism.

• “Take coffee growers for example they are pitted against each other by the buyers and thus live in poverty as competition pushes their wares lower and lower. If they were to cartelise they would be able to afford good things and have the basic dignity of always having enough to eat. Competition in the market makes everyone poorer”. The formation of unions can be useful but is limited in effectiveness, especially in periods of poor-bargaining power for working class groups such as now, with very low levels of organization. The purpose of supporting unionization, from a communist view, must also include the concern to increase our leverage during period of economic boom so as to be better prepared during downturns for pushes for radicalization.

“so while trade unions are an anti-competetive practice that’s only because competetive practices are stupid” - this is vague or ambiguous and it doesn’t look like the former point doesn’t step from the latter. Also stupid for whom? Why? How? For workers? then yes, as per my point.

I understand what you mean, but I’d really strongly object to the use you’ve made of the term though as that is precisely the use which was introduced by the right-wing for the purposes of delegitimizing labour organization by conflating labour organization with the anti-competitive nature of cartels in the ideological and rhethorical climate of Neoliberalism that has continuously fetishized supposed competition and playing off our fear of it while nevertheless tending the conditions that promote cartelization of the global economy to the hilt.

The difference is that cartels are firms controlled by capitalists for the purpose of profit and capital accumulation. They fix prices for this purpose. Workers do not, because by their very nature capital accumulation is the logic of the capitalists’ material interests, and so in strong contradiction, in the final analysis, with the material interests of labour. Cartel on this definition you’ve used would then just mean ‘price control’. But is then a monopoly or the government a cartel when they respectively fix or regulate prices? The purpose of the introduction of the term was to refer to new formations, concentrations and centralizations of capital in the late 19th century for purposes of overcoming the economic slowdown of this period. It seems harmful, confused and inevitably confusing to widen the meaning of the word so broadly.

I obviously agree that labour should organize, and there are circumstances in which markets might be tolerated in very restricted ways from a socialist perspective, and in such markets labour should therefore of course be organized in such a way as to control production and therefore prices. But the assumption in your question that markets are ‘legitimate’ in general strikes me as deeply problematic and politically un-Marxist.

‘Free-markets’ has never referred to a philosophical, moral or spiritual idea of freedom, except when used rhetorically in discourse by the right, especially since Thatcher and Reagan, i.e. the full onset of the Neoliberal counter-revolution.

Economists do not study the idea of ‘freedom’. That is a philosophical concept. When they say ‘free’, and you actually look at the structure of the propositions they use, they are referring essentially to the private autonomy of firms as ‘free’ to the degree that there is no non-private, social, public or governmental interest (it’s not only the government, as this definition implies that trade-unions make a market ‘less free’).

There is absolutely nothing inconsistent between free-markets and market concentration. If by a free-market, we use the standard neoclassical meaning of one where there is no/very little/minimal government or public regulation to influence demand or supply or the price mechanism, which in material terms implies that those are completely controlled by private capital and its owners, then there is nothing stopping this from being an oligopoly, a cartel or a monopoly. Actually lack of public regulation has generally lead to more concentration, not less.

I think you are confusing the neoclassical ‘perfect competition’ (which does not, and cannot, exist in the real world) and neoclassically defined ‘free’-markets.

Please don’t try drop econ-101 learns on Marxists if you don’t know the definitions of free-market economics, perfect competition or oligopolies.

Lmao westerners having a totally normal one over the lack of loyalty of a slop-house to the divinely-ordained imperial cause.

Then lastly on Sweden. First of all, it is historic that now Finland is member of the Alliance. And we have to remember the background. The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.

Learn to read.

It’s hilarious seeing the liberals’ comments here that prove that despite being overeducated they literally don’t know how to read.

Firstly, I’m not sure your understanding of the meaning or relevance of ‘hypocrisy’ is very clear.

Secondly, you’re introducing a moralistic discourse about this when the first issue is what caused or explained the Russian intervention in Ukraine. Despite the evidence overwhelmingly pointing to NATO expansion, the fact that you are denying it when even Stoltenberg and Blinken are basically at the point of admitting it, implicit as those admissions may be, is pretty comic.

If you think that the Ukrainian government was not only not abusing, but in fact not committing acts amounting to ethnically cleansing Russians in eastern Ukraine, you have been living under a rock and its disgusting that you can utter such bullshit with such nonchalance and impunity. Contrary to, say, accusation of genocide in Xinjiang, for which there is no hard concrete evidence (in fact evidence and reason point to the contrary), there are mountains of evidence in every form of media, whether video, documents, government announcements, proving that there was repressive military and political action being taken against the Russophone and ethinically Russian, or simply anti-nationalist Ukrainians of the East, by the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist regime. There have been mass disappearances, lynchings, bombings, assassinations, and we could go on. Again, there is too much evidence for this in every form for any one person to peruse the entirety of, so either you are pig-shit ignorant, or you are lying. Trouble is you are doing it in the wrong place.

Your last sentence is barely comprehensible quite frankly. If you think that reocognizing that a state should not aggressively expand a demonstrably imperialist organisation and in the process break all related previous agreements and promises in doing so, in a way that every party involved is fully aware will be perceived as a threat to the national security of one of the concerned countries, if one wants to avoid hot conflict, given the self-evident realities of realpolitik, is communist or marxist, then go off I guess.

congratulations, you are beyond parody

This is an insult to the lovecraftian function of court jesters.

Are the brigades in the room with us right now?

they got them poor langley interns down the postin mines workin overtime i tell ya hwaht

Henry Kissinger on suicide watch

The Green parties are simply a way in which the capitalist superstructure ensures the security of the base by ensuring electoral support of the pearl-clutching petit-bourgeois.