PSL's Presidential Campaign Video: What is Socialism?

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Nothing was made, it was gained, usually by vigorous action on the part of women.

Of course, the bourgeoisie won't make concessions on its own, it is assumed that trade unionism and struggle was very important in all that.

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I am curious why you don't believe that moving women into the workplace was to lower wages? Women, children, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, outsourcing, this is the exact same pattern we have seen over and over again throughout history.

It was made to increase profits, i'm not objecting to what you're saying here.

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If a less advantaged group will work more hours for less money, it drives down wages and benefits, or you can outright eliminate a type of job and replace it with a worse one.

Yes, correct.

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Oh how I love it when white dudes dismiss the struggles of women and minorities.

No one is dismissing the struggle, that would be absurd.
What i'm saying is that bourgeois-feminism and various more or less petty-bourgeois nationalist movements aren't revolutionary struggles.
BPs were somewhat more advanced and more progressive in this regard but nevertheless they were not a revolutionary vanguard of the American proletariat.
Clara Zetkin and Kollontai wrote against bourgeois feminism.

BTW That you had a need to bring up "white dudes" is symptomatic of American Liberal-influenced Leftism in general.

Loz wrote:

Clara Zetkin and Kollontai wrote against bourgeois feminism.

Who is saying anything about bourgeois feminism?

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BTW That you had a need to bring up "white dudes" is symptomatic of American Liberal-influenced Leftism in general.

No, you dismissing the struggle of women and minorities is symptomatic of typical Eastern European patriarchal national Bolshevism.

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Who is saying anything about bourgeois feminism?

And will you disagree when i say that contemporary feminism is largely bourgeois in its outlook and praxis, even going as far as giving ideological support to Imperialism in the Middle East?
Will you disagree that in the West it is the ruling classes that are on the forefront of this fight for LGBT and so on and so forth "rights"?

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No, you dismissing the struggle of women and minorities is symptomatic of typical Eastern European patriarchal national Bolshevism.

E. Europe and the USSR in particular had womens rights and right for national minorities decades before the West.
Anyway this is off-topic given that i wasn't "dismissing" any struggle, but saying that there aren't revolutionary struggles.

They may not be revolutionary now, but that's our duty. To link together individual acts of oppression to overall capitalism.

There's a quote from Lenin that I am forgetting now, about how labour unions might be worthless to some radicals, but for other's they can be a step towards radicalism. Same applies else where I think.

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They may not be revolutionary now, but that's our duty.

They can never be revolutionary, because it's only the working class that's revolutionary to the end. Not some "Black" or "Female" or "LGBT" or "Chicano" movements.

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There's a quote from Lenin that I am forgetting now, about how labour unions might be worthless to some radicals, but for other's they can be a step towards radicalism.

Yes, which is why BPs and feminist movements had a great role, but now it's time to overcome these "individual struggles".

Loz wrote:

This is an abstraction and a generalization but i guess no.

How are the material conditions of two separate groups an abstraction? One is poor and oppressed, the other is even poorer and even more oppressed (incarceration rates, institutional racism, etc). And even more importantly one group is elevated above the other. The court system is the most blatant example of this white privilege, which is maintained as a sort of race aristocracy.

Loz wrote:

Why would this matter anyway?

Why does it matter? Because you say we should ignore such things and instead use class-conflict are our only slogan. Whites must be made to acknowledge the incorrectness of our current system, from which they directly benefit. And blacks must be shown that the race struggle will not be solved by the enemy class. Class-consciousness is more than just saying "you're all workers".

Loz wrote:

Azeris didn't have the same "experience" as Russian workers in Baku in 1910s either. Yet the Bolsheviks never separated the common struggle.

Who said anything about separatism? Or for that matter how is focusing on the very real race problems plaguing our proletariat a departure from class war?

Loz wrote:

No, as women obviously face some discrimination in the sense of lower wages and so on. But all that is more about the leftovers of previous prejudice and not, so to speak, class-oppression.

So you reject the very notion of patriarchy? Or think it will whither away?

Loz wrote:

The ruling classes don't have some "anti-women" agenda. Capitalism championed womens rights when it started throwing women out of the house into the factories in the 19th century. Of course that was a long and brutal stuggle, but that's how history goes.

Way to ascribe our proletarian achievements to the enemy class. Working women forced these rights through. Your line of logic is the same as those conservative women who harp on feminism.

Loz wrote:

E. Europe and the USSR in particular had womens rights and right for national minorities decades before the West.
Anyway this is off-topic given that i wasn't "dismissing" any struggle, but saying that there aren't revolutionary struggles.

And yet patriarchy is in full-swing in the former second world. As clearly evidenced by eastern prudishness and anti-homosexuality attitudes.

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How are the material conditions of two separate groups an abstraction? One is poor and oppressed, the other is even poorer and even more oppressed (incarceration rates, institutional racism, etc).

It neccessarily has to be, because you're putting the underclasses and the lumpenproletariat ( White trash, ghetto gangbangers and other such types ) in the same bag with workers. Of course that this is more prominent among the Black demographics.

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And even more importantly one group is elevated above the other.

What group?

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The court system is the most blatant example of this white privilege, which is maintained as a sort of race aristocracy.

How?

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Why does it matter? Because you say we should ignore such things and instead use class-conflict are our only slogan.

That's what matters the most, yes, of course no one's saying that there should not be campaigning against racism and so on.

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Whites must be made to acknowledge the incorrectness of our current system, from which they directly benefit.

That's liberal thinking. How do Whites benefit from Black people being given longer sentences for the same crimes?

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Class-consciousness is more than just saying "you're all workers".

Indeed, but the mail goal is erasing the importance of race, not erecting more Chinese Walls.

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Or for that matter how is focusing on the very real race problems plaguing our proletariat a departure from class war?

Look at all these national-liberation stuggles that always ended in capitulation before Capital. Although focusing on the issues of racism of course doesn't harm class consciousness.

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So you reject the very notion of patriarchy? Or think it will whither away?

No, but capitalism is doing away with it as we speak because, as we can see, more and more females are getting well-paid jobs and so on.

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Way to ascribe our proletarian achievements to the enemy class. Working women forced these rights through. Your line of logic is the same as those conservative women who harp on feminism.

How strongly does contemporary feminism influence, and how important is it to working women today?

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And yet patriarchy is in full-swing in the former second world. As clearly evidenced by eastern prudishness and anti-homosexuality attitudes.

Even the most chauvinist and reactionary leftist parties such as the CPRF are for improvement of womens rights. A return to Soviet-era womens rights would be a great step forward. In 1990 we went back 50 years.
However i guarantee that the Gay Pride in my country most certainly wouldn't have happened without the strong support from the highest echelons of EU, government and the Police.

This is a waste of time, I'm not even sure there's anything to reply to, Loz. Your dismissal of the BPP demonstrates you have a vulgar understanding of Marxism, I don't know how else to put this.

Loz wrote:

It neccessarily has to be, because you're putting the underclasses and the lumpenproletariat ( White trash, ghetto gangbangers and other such types ) in the same bag with workers. Of course that this is more prominent among the Black demographics.

Lumpenproletariat are not lumpen by choice. Their condition is the same as the workers much like police officers and soldiers. There are only two classes remember, despite the factions within. Also have you paused to consider why the black lumpen constitute a higher percentage of their population? Or in fact why proletarians end up as lumpen?

Loz wrote:

What group?

Whites. Of course their is a further stratification within whites as well but your average white person will have the advantage in most situations over the average black.

Loz wrote:

How?

Established power and institutional racism/sexism. The entire concept of whiteness itself is basically the guiding force of this race aristocracy.

Loz wrote:

That's what matters the most, yes, of course no one's saying that there should not be campaigning against racism and so on.

Forgive me but weren't you saying that our focus on race was a deviation from class-agitation?

Loz wrote:

That's liberal thinking. How do Whites benefit from Black people being given longer sentences for the same crimes?

lol wrong. Liberal thinking is that the bourgeoisie have solved the race problem and that it's only ignorant poor folk who persist. That whites and blacks are equal in law and society. Whites benefit from this system because we get preferential treatment and tye bourgeoisie gain by making white workers think "at least I'm white so it's not so bad". It's the exact same thing as labor aristocracy. They want us to fear losing our privileged position and to acknowledge that our privileged position is wrong is important in demolishing the fear of losing it.

Loz wrote:

Indeed, but the mail goal is erasing the importance of race, not erecting more Chinese Walls.

You can't erase things when you have no power. We cannot solve problems from our level except to seize power, and until then race will continue to be important because it is one of the most viscious divisions in our class.

Loz wrote:

Look at all these national-liberation stuggles that always ended in capitulation before Capital. Although focusing on the issues of racism of course doesn't harm class consciousness.

Of course forgetting class-struggle will castrate your movement but you've failed to show how we've set ourselves up as against class conflict or rejected it for race conflict.

Loz wrote:

No, but capitalism is doing away with it as we speak because, as we can see, more and more females are getting well-paid jobs and so on.

How is capitalism doing away with it? Power still fully resides in the palms of men. A few token women leaders does nothing to change the fact that men still dominate our societies. Even the USSR failed to eradicate patriarchy (they never even had one female head of state) so how the eff are capitalists supposed to achieve this historic task?

Loz wrote:

How strongly does contemporary feminism influence, and how important is it to working women today?

It's not important at all. Patriarchy won against it (not that it was much of a fight). Feminists make the critical error of thinking they can unilaterally defeat patriarchy, when in fact it is men who need to play a guiding role. Some would say this is trading one patriarchy for another, but I'd say it's more like refusing to trade patriarchy for matriarchy.

Loz wrote:

Even the most chauvinist and reactionary leftist parties such as the CPRF are for improvement of womens rights. A return to Soviet-era womens rights would be a great step forward. In 1990 we went back 50 years.

So? Improvement of women's rights are meaningless when men's improve more. By your logic patriarchy is already defeated because daughters aren't the property of their fathers and wives aren't the property of their husbands.

Loz wrote:

However i guarantee that the Gay Pride in my country most certainly wouldn't have happened without the strong support from the highest echelons of EU, government and the Police.

Gay Pride is a liberal notion through and through. It's no surprise that a country aiming to please western powers would fund liberal activists. That said Gay Pride is a product of patriarchy. It aims to cement the difference of homosexuals from "normals".

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Indeed, but the mail goal is erasing the importance of race, not erecting more Chinese Walls.

This pseudo colorblindness is quite insane. The idea that combating racism is equal to ignoring racism makes no sense strategically and ends up reinforcing racism in the first place.

It's not the Left that makes race important, but the development of racism along with capitalism that has done this. Thus the job of those of us fighting against capitalism is to fight against racism specifically as well.

Khlib, if you don't see why that comic is liberal bullshit then i really don't know what to say.
It wasn't "Whites" that all got rich on slave labor, it was the ( White ) North that destroyed the backwards South and hurled the Black people ( along with all the others) into capitalism and into becoming proletarians and so on.
It's mind-boggling why you decided to post this anti-Marxist nonsense here. To describe "Black-White relations" in such a way...

Also i will soon try to reply to other points.

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This is a waste of time, I'm not even sure there's anything to reply to, Loz. Your dismissal of the BPP demonstrates you have a vulgar understanding of Marxism, I don't know how else to put this.

Explain how saying that the BPP wasn't a revolutionary vanguard of the American working class demonstrates that i have a vulgar understanding of Marxism, thanks. Of course i do not doubt that i have a somewhat vulgar understanding of Marxism, but you didn't prove that.

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Lumpenproletariat are not lumpen by choice. Their condition is the same as the workers much like police officers and soldiers. There are only two classes remember, despite the factions within. Also have you paused to consider why the black lumpen constitute a higher percentage of their population? Or in fact why proletarians end up as lumpen?

I think there are lumpen by choice, but that doesn't really matter, what matters is pushing for such elements to stop being lumpen.
And why do proletarians end up as lumpen?

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Whites. Of course their is a further stratification within whites as well but your average white person will have the advantage in most situations over the average black.

What advantage?

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Established power and institutional racism/sexism. The entire concept of whiteness itself is basically the guiding force of this race aristocracy.

I don't think that there is institutional racism or sexism or "race aristocracy" (?) in the West.

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Forgive me but weren't you saying that our focus on race was a deviation from class-agitation?

Yes but campaigning against racism in general is one thing and pandering to petty-bourgeois nationalisms, which is what the PSL is doing, is another.

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Liberal thinking is that the bourgeoisie have solved the race problem and that it's only ignorant poor folk who persist. That whites and blacks are equal in law and society. Whites benefit from this system because we get preferential treatment and tye bourgeoisie gain by making white workers think "at least I'm white so it's not so bad". It's the exact same thing as labor aristocracy. They want us to fear losing our privileged position and to acknowledge that our privileged position is wrong is important in demolishing the fear of losing it.

I don't think that Whites have a privileged position. Institutional racism in the real sense of the word ( Jim Crow etc.) is gone.
For example, in America at least Asians outmatch Whites and everyone else in pretty much everything.
Of course that there are some left-overs from the previous times but that is being done away with.

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You can't erase things when you have no power. We cannot solve problems from our level except to seize power, and until then race will continue to be important because it is one of the most viscious divisions in our class.

Yes, well, what i meant to say was that we should try to make race stop being such a division.

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How is capitalism doing away with it? Power still fully resides in the palms of men. A few token women leaders does nothing to change the fact that men still dominate our societies. Even the USSR failed to eradicate patriarchy (they never even had one female head of state) so how the eff are capitalists supposed to achieve this historic task?

What power? Power resides with various corporations and so on. Whether the politics are dominated by women or men doesn't really mean much. That's what liberals bother themselves with.
But yes capitalism is doing away with it every day. Women have left the kitchens long ago and there's no question that patriarchy and what's left of it is being undermined by this fundamental change: women are workers now.
Also the state, such as the French one, is evidently pro-feminist. Look at their new law.

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So? Improvement of women's rights are meaningless when men's improve more. By your logic patriarchy is already defeated because daughters aren't the property of their fathers and wives aren't the property of their husbands.

Real improvements can never be meaningless.

Meh. Dunno. I'm probably wrong about this but...

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This pseudo colorblindness is quite insane. The idea that combating racism is equal to ignoring racism makes no sense strategically and ends up reinforcing racism in the first place.

No one said that, what are you arguing against?

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It's not the Left that makes race important, but the development of racism along with capitalism that has done this. Thus the job of those of us fighting against capitalism is to fight against racism specifically as well.

Just be careful not to fall into racism yourselves.

Loz, you may want to read the most recent Red Phoenix article from the APL, if you genuinely believe that there isn't structural and institutional racism in the United States.

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Loz, you may want to read the most recent Red Phoenix article from the APL, if you genuinely believe that there isn't structural and institutional racism in the United States.

The one that says the police kill a Black man every 40 hours?
Of course that there are racists in the police force.
Although i'm not sure if we can speak of "institutional racism" in the sense of there being explicitely racist laws and indeed institutions whose purpose is enforcing this racism ( Jim Crow for example ).
You have racism with the police force but you also have racial quotas, equal opportunity and a myriad of other government-supported initiatives and organizations. Something has clearly changed since the 60s.

Loz wrote:

Explain how saying that the BPP wasn't a revolutionary vanguard of the American working class demonstrates that i have a vulgar understanding of Marxism, thanks. Of course i do not doubt that i have a somewhat vulgar understanding of Marxism, but you didn't prove that.

It shows that your conception of the proletariat, revolution, and movements to liberate oppressed communities (that are oppressed by the power structure that is capitalism) is fundamentally flawed. You seem to be unaware of the link between capitalism and racism, something that Marxism has been dealing with in great detail for about a century at this point (And even Marx touched on it in Capital Volume 1).

The Panthers approach was Marxist and they were able to link the struggles against racism to the struggle against capitalism, because they are part of the same struggle. Your attempt to paint fighting racism as "liberal" is empty and you have no argument there. (So far all I've seen from you in this regard is what is equivalent to "nuh uh!!")

Loz wrote:

Although i'm not sure if we can speak of "institutional racism" in the sense of there being explicitely racist laws and indeed institutions whose purpose is enforcing this racism ( Jim Crow for example ).
You have racism with the police force but you also have racial quotas, equal opportunity and a myriad of other government-supported initiatives and organizations. Something has clearly changed since the 60s.

Well it's quite obvious that you're not sure, as a matter of fact you seem quite clueless about the nature of structural racism. How is it that the disparity in, let's take unemployment, between black and white workers just kind of slips your mind? Or the nature of the prison industrial-complex, the war on drugs, etc. is just absent from your analysis? How do you account for these things?

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It shows that your conception of the proletariat, revolution, and movements to liberate oppressed communities (that are oppressed by the power structure that is capitalism) is fundamentally flawed.

Heh,good thing that BP had a proper conception of things, which is why they failed miserably.

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You seem to be unaware of the link between capitalism and racism, something that Marxism has been dealing with in great detail for about a century at this point (And even Marx touched on it in Capital Volume 1).

Are you talking about the "labor of white-skinned cannot be free while the labor of black-skinned is enslaved"?
That's not really about the "link between capitalism and racism", it's a sort of metaphor for slavery and the US was the only relevant country in the world that still had slavery in the backwards South ( and of course these slaves were Black ).
BTW Marx and Engels were viciously racist, if you want i can post quotes.

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In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours’ agitation, that ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California. The General Congress of labour at Baltimore (August 16th, 1866) declared:
“The first and great necessity of the present, to free the labour of this country from capitalistic slavery, is the passing of a law by which eight hours shall be the normal working-day in all States of the American Union. We are resolved to put forth all our strength until this glorious result is attained.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/wo ... h10.htm#S7

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The Panthers approach was Marxist and they were able to link the struggles against racism to the struggle against capitalism, because they are part of the same struggle.

Their approach wasn't the correct one because they weren't able to rally the working masses ( not even the Black working masses ) around themselves. And Leninism says that this is the main criteria for whether a party is doing its job properly or not.

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Well it's quite obvious that you're not sure, as a matter of fact you seem quite clueless about the nature of structural racism. How is it that the disparity in, let's take unemployment, between black and white workers just kind of slips your mind? Or the nature of the prison industrial-complex, the war on drugs, etc. is just absent from your analysis? How do you account for these things?

I don't know, post some source.

Loz wrote:

Heh,good thing that BP had a proper conception of things, which is why they failed miserably.

What about their conception of things made them fail exactly?

Loz wrote:

BTW Marx and Engels were viciously racist,

Your point being?

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Their approach wasn't the correct one because they weren't able to rally the working masses ( not even the Black working masses ) around themselves. And Leninism says that this is the main criteria for whether a party is doing its job properly or not.

This is just false, they gained mass support in the Black Community, and were violently suppressed by the FBI's COINTELPRO (at least this played a significant part in the destruction of the Party)

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I don't know, post some source.

Are you really not familiar with those things I just brought up?

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What about their conception of things made them fail exactly?

The conception that it is possible for one race to be the vanguard of the revolution in America without active and mass support from workers of all races or that African-Americans are an oppressed nation.

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Your point being?

Simply refuting your claim that Marx wrote anything about "the link between capitalism and racism", and pointing out that he was actually a racist.

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This is just false, they gained mass support in the Black Community, and were violently suppressed by the FBI's COINTELPRO (at least this played a significant part in the destruction of the Party)

Even if this was true, which i doubt, they still didn't get the support of American proletariat in general, which was why they had to fail.

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Are you really not familiar with those things I just brought up?

Not familiar enough i think.

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The conception that it is possible for one race to be the vanguard of the revolution in America without active and mass support from workers of all races or that African-Americans are an oppressed nation.

They did not claim this, thus this is a straw man against their perspective. And just, once again, simply false.

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Even if this was true, which i doubt, they still didn't get the support of American proletariat in general, which was why they had to fail.

I'll repeat the question that I asked many times that you have continued to ignore: what was their base of support then? Who were these folks that made up the Party (which according to a quick search on wiki was up to 10,000 members)?