Ask Lemmygrad

So, I went that route but it was insufficient for the discourse. The fixation was that the working class of the USA could seize ownership through revolution and then use their ownership to develop an industrial base, which would benefit everyone. They would do this in collaboration with the first nations, who also need to be part of the ownership of the MoP. So the fixation on finance was sufficiently contextualized.

What they said was that making decolonization a prereq to socialist revolution was essentially a fatalist position and that decolonization could only happen under a DotP.

So, I agree with everything you said, but it was insufficient in the discourse and I am looking to develop my understanding more.

They argue against this by saying essentially that the colonisation of the US has been realized and so you shouldn’t focus on it because it’s impossible to undo it at this point. This is the same position basically all communist parties in the US hold as well.

Honestly, i don't think this is wrong. The process is largely over at this point in north america, the vast majority of people in the US is of non-native origin and native americans, while not privileged by any means, are pretty much assimilated at this point they even serve in the military. Of course, the US does and will support ongoing genocides abroad like Palestine, latin america and future ones (Syria comes to mind), because it's an effective anti-communist policy. At this point the US is the stronghold of the entire world's bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie

Not trying to agree with the patsocs, since they're just social imperialists after all, what i am trying to say here is that it's not the primary contradiction in the world right now, it is the USD hegemony which pretty much enables the currently existing settler-colonialism and other reactionary movements around the world.

These are good points!

One quibble. South Africa has about the same amount of time as a settler colonial project, though of course with its own unowue history. Decolonization there is, of course, incomplete, but has certainly advanced.

So long as imperialism continues to loot the rest of the world and use those spoils to keep the imperial core population placated, neither decolonization nor a communist revolution are likely to find fertile ground to grow in. Anti-imperialism needs to be the primary concern of communists as well as non-communist advocates of decolonization in the imperial core.

its a very complex issue since such a movement would hardly gain any support in the imperial core since anti-imperialism directly hits their living standards, which is also why communist parties in the imperial core are just social imperialist populists, i ultimately think that nothing good will come out of the imperial core and no one should expect anything out of them.

This strikes me as fertile ground. So if the primary contradiction in the USA is imperialism, anti-imperialism would therefore necessarily entail smashing the ready-made apparatus of the state - and specifically that apparatus which serves imperialism: the military, the stock market, the banking systems, the IMF, the WTO, the various treaties, the oil and natural gas frameworks, the telephone and Internet frameworks, the media and IP frameworks, etc.

Is that generally the direction you're pointing?

So let us imagine a hypothetical worker. They went to college on the GI Bill and have clear path of advancement in their career, they have retirement savings in the stock market and savings in the bank, they have a home which is accruing value in the real estate market, and they keep up with their credit and debts and bills because of that well paying job. Their kids can grow up to be real estate agents, investment bankers, and corporate executives.

To me this seems like the equivalent of saying "imagine a perfectly spherical ball rolling across a smooth frictionless surface" in terms of picking a member of the "bourgeouified portion of the working class". Note that, I'm going to refer to the "bourgeouified portion of the working class" as being members of the "labor aristocracy" for this reply. That may lead to some disagreement, but from my understanding both of what labor aristocracy means and of your post, this is essentially what we are talking about.

• Going to university on the GI Bill could be a veteran or it could be a spouse or child of a veteran, so this complicates the analysis slightly. Especially because not every household of this demographic is the idyllic leave-it-to-beaver family with kids that are like "Gee golly mom/dad, it sure was swell that you killed all those people overseas when you were in the Army", even if they do directly benefit from their parent doing that. Plus, the existence of anti-imperialist and/or socialist veterans implies, to me at least, that even amongst this demographic, there must be something which could interest this worker in socialism.
• Barely any careers have a clear path of advancement anymore. I can't even really think of more than 10, and even amongst those, not all of them would be jobs I would consider to be apart of the labor aristocracy.
• The portion of college graduates who can comfortably save and invest has gone down dramatically (see the next point).
• The portion of college graduates who are able to afford a home (which is accruing value) has gone down dramatically. I mean, the average age of first time home buyers increased from 35 to 38 in just this last year.
• It seems dubious that, even if you did find someone for whom all the above factors do hold, that they would assume that their child would be able to easily be successful in any of the types of career which do enjoy an elevated relationship over ordinary labor, especially in 2024/2025.

Above all of that, climate change affecting them or their children, decreasing standard of living and lowering life expectancy all still seem like plausible reasons for even this hypothetical worker to adopt socialist politics, even if it's unlikely.

However, I don't dispute the existence of a labor-aristocracy and it being the difficult obstacle to overcome still, especially when we consider the direct relationship members of the labor aristocracy have with settler-colonialism and imperialism in the US. I just think that as the contradictions inherent in capitalism continue to progress into their terminal phase, we're going to see less and less of this type of worker because the US capitalist system is being forced to liquidate this exact kind of worker at the moment in order to stay alive. Consequently, I think that this type of analysis is becoming increasingly outdated at the moment.

So I took the position that the MAGA movement has a massive petite bourgeois element to it, and that many of them play a role that is strongly correlated with the kulaks, but that was rebuffed with an equally well supported position as neither of have any data to back it up.

But the point about people having to give up their interest in the stock market is answered by "that's why we're fighting against the bourgeois financial class". Which makes sense because you don't need money to survive retirement once the DotP arises.

His point was also that the number of people who voted for Trump is far larger than the number of people that own Air BnBs or other forms of rental income, which I think is probably accurate.

I think what you're getting at is the point made by Tuck and Yang in Decolonization is not a Metaphor about incommensurate interests between the settlers and the indigenous and ADOS.

I am looking for more analysis along that line, something I can read and analyze.

Is it not easier and neater to describe this worker as being part of a class of lifetime net creditors, as opposed to lifetime net debtors?

So the question to answer is WHY is it required to address all these contradictions at once? What is the material basis for this position? My interlocutor's position was that the bourgeoisie would never allow the working class to build a movement with the indigenous to such a mature state that it resolves the settler contradiction while it resolves the bourgeois contradiction. Therefore, his position continues, the primary contradiction is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and resolving that contradiction creates the material conditions necessary to solve the other contradictions.

Part of that position is that the indigenous population in the US is simply too small, too divided, and lacks sufficient power over productive forces to have revolutionary potential.

This is not a moral question. It's a material question. I agree with your position, but I am looking for a stronger material analysis to back up the position I share with you.

Maybe I need to reread Settlers and Colonization is Not a Metaphor and On the National Question. But is there more I could read to strengthen my understanding of this topic?

Can you expand on your point that the USSR gives us an example of an approach involving prioritizing the national question going hand in hand with prioritizing class struggle?

That's interesting. I wonder if Marx/Engels had any writings on what would happen with a DotP in Britain vis-a-vis their imperial apparatus. I know Lenin wrote about the national question and took action to give nations under the Russian empire self-determination.

To be honest I don’t think any “MAGACommunost” even knows what a contradiction is, let alone primary vs. secondary. They are probably just misusing left words to be national chauvinist.

Usually I would agree, but in this case I feel compelled to challenge myself to improve my understanding by assuming they are earnest.

One, what is the mechanism by which the US ruling class owns all its means of production?

This is a great question.

Two, how do MAGA ‘communists’ hope to seize the means of production without a socialist workers’ state that has ignored its settler characteristics?

Did you drop a negative here?

I would have thought you would ask how to MagaComms hope to seize the means of production without a socialist workers' state that hasn't ignored its settler characteristics. Because they DO hope to seize the MoP with a socialist workers' state that has ignored its settler characteristics.

As for that primary contradiction, the US sits at the top of a global empire. The ruling class gets it’s power from exploiting the whole world, not just the US.

This is a good area for me to explore rhetorically.

The means of production that it owns are not just those of settler-yanks. Fighting for control over those means of production as a kind of benevolent act of self-appointed righteousness to seize world power while ignoring the importance of settler colonialism is problematic at best.

So I think that's the interesting question. Is the MagaComm advocating to seize the global MoP from the seat of the USA as a "benevolent act of self-appointed righteousness to seize world power" or is the MagaComm saying, they will only be able to break the financiers' hold on that global ownership by establishing the DotP in the USA and executing land reform and eliminating the legal means of ownership of the MoP?

It’s another route to choosing reform over revolution with communist aesthetics. We’ve seen what that looks like before.

Can you help me with some examples of what you mean here?

Why should indigenous people (and all colonised and exploited people around the world) have to wait patiently for MAGA types to get theirs first?

The answer from the MagaComm is that the MAGA are the class with revolutionary potential by virtue of their ability to shutdown the economy by withholding their labor, whereas the indigenous are not, unless they join with the MAGA (the reverse is not the case as the workers keeping the economy going are far and away more MAGA than indigenous). He advocates to not be exclusionary towards indigenous and ADOS but that the working class does not need to tail them to succeed in establishing a DotP.

And what level of arrogance makes these settlers think that everyone else will wait patiently and potentially even support their ‘revolution’?

I think it's a similar position to Marx saying that the proletariat has revolutionary potential but the lumpen do not. Yes, the lumped would benefit from a DotP and yes the lumped have needs potentially not represented by the proletariat, but to Marx the lumpen did not have revolutionary potential and so they would have to tail the proletariat whilst they made revolution. This would be a similar position on the part of MagaComms that the indigenous and ADOS don't have revolutionary potential and so must tail the class that does or risk fighting against the revolution that would bring about the DotP.

I think you and I share a particular position, which is that a MAGA revolution with communist aesthetics would become a 4th Reich fascist regime co-opted by the bourgeoisie using divide and conquer strategies along race, ethnicity, religion, and other idpol lines. Mao solved this with the mass line: "win a victory for the people, win the advanced over to socialism, and strike a blow to the enemy, or win the advanced to socialism, influence the intermediate, and isolate the backwards."

I think potentially this reminds of another line of reasoning - the MagaComm is arguing from Marxism-Leninism with a heavy emphasis on Marx's writing on the proletariat. What they downplay is how wrong Marx has been, historically, that the proletariat has revolutionary potential. As far as I'm aware, all of the successful revolutions that have created a DotP have been peasant revolts, not proletarian ones. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Not really.

It means there's two opposite sides to an issue. If I destroy one side, the contradiction goes away. E.g. I take the monarchy and lop their heads off -> feudalism gone.

In this context it is a reference to dialectical thinking, specifically dialectical materialism, where we say there are two opposing forces in order to understand a situation. If we are right that these forces are in opposition and struggle against one another, our insights from this framing will be more correct. For example, imagine an ice cube in a freezer. If we open the door of the freezer, the ice cube might stary to melt, but this really depends on the dynamics of opposing forces: those tending to heat the cube, namely the ambient air, and those tending to cool the cube, namely the compressor and how active it is. If the room is nearly at freezing already (tendency to heat is weak) and the compressor fairly strong, the ice cube won't melt. But we can imagine other scenarios where it might start melting. This is the usefulness of dialectical thinking, you can think of situations in terms of how they are changing based on where they are now and how they function.

Socialists are concerned with dialectical situations like class struggle or imperialism.

For primary vs. secondary, this isn't much more thsn just saying one of the dialectical situations is the most important, it has so much more impact tjat if even determines the others. This is not always a useful way of thinking, but you can think of it as thinking of the dialectics between dialectical situations.