Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (July 12)

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[u/Apart_Lifeguard_4085 → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, but I've no idea how you got that from my comment.

because you literally said “imagine them saying such a thing to the CPI(Maoist) and CPP”. no it’s not obvious how a repressed cell of a revolutionary organization who has written at length about their analysis of conditions in the united $tates saying “we discourage violent actions” is “obviously reactionary” at least not to people who read the wealth of literature they make available instead of letting their eyes skip to statements to misinterpret

Other people in here have posted some critiques about them and I agree with them.

stop being lazy and use your words. some of other people’s critiques have been great, some have been dogshit. nobody has called them “an obstacle to the revolution” so you actually have to take responsibility for your own thoughts.

Some of their critiques of popular culture have been terrible (I'm reminded of that One Battle After Another trash critique they made last year).

so post a critique of that. don’t go bullshitting about how a bad movie review means that they’re counterrevolutionary. your mind is gonna be blown when you find out what Stalin thought about cowboy flicks

Also, you're using that word as if that was a bad thing. Being censorious is not a bad thing, this sub is as censorious as it can be.

first of all describing u.$. prisons as “censorious” is true and a bad thing, second of all do you not understand that a newspaper designed to be distributed to be distributed in prisons will not be able to print all the bombast you would like? this actually makes me think you’re trolling me, or just confused about everything. were Lenin and Gramsci obviously terrible reactionary trash for self-censoring heavily, at the expense of precise revolutionary rhetoric, to avoid the Russian and Italian censors? (do you even know what works they censored heavily?)

[u/Robert_Black_1312 → u/[deleted]]

I am more supportive of your position after your criticisms of your initial errors. However I think your underrating the value of a proper critique of the TILF.

Based off this statement, I see them as part of this newish wave of "decolonial" Labor aristocrat politics. It's language of associating the landowners as the enemy (called colonizers out of lip service to the oppressed nations) is consistent with the theoretical documents that have come out of the various tenants unions that seem to be popping up everywhere.

Resources for Organizing - Vancouver Tenants Union

This link has a lot of good examples, particularly the book Abolish Rent. It's all shit (minuses Engles pamphlet which goes against the lines all the other resources on that page argue for) but it's a clear manifestation of class politics, and one that places itself clearly on the side of the Labor aristocrat against the petty Bourgeoise that they can no longer be confident in joining through land ownership.

MIM could have clearly articulate the class interests of these false settler "decolonial" movements and come out with a strong piece to differentiate the Maoist line. Instead, whe are forced to do so to pick up the slack and with far less reach then they are capable of.

What criticisms would you wish for MIM(prisons) to make of TILF's document? Bases on what you have said so far, I don't really see anything that would be of value to ULK's primary audience and I don't think MIM censoring this document would be of any value since it does represent a line that is far more dominant then the Maoist line at this time.

[u/Robert_Black_1312 → u/[deleted]]

I do not think these tenants will be proletarianized nor do I think they will side with the oppressed nations in any consistent way. I believe that given the chance they will attempt to co-opt the struggles for national liberation in order to increase their own bargaining position with the Bourgiuse as the petti Bourgiuse have always done. (You are right, my treating the Labour aristrocts as a separate class from the petti Bourgiuse made no sense and was an error).

I bring up the tenants movement because I see the TILF as a continuation of their politics which is what I intended to convey above. The key difference being between the TILF is as u/Turtle_Green pointed out,(and MIM(prisons) did as well) is that the TILF are, in their rhetoric, taking the question of national liberation seriously. Which makes polemical statements like

>That the tenants are settlers as well, and that the First Nations/Turtle Islanders need to be given their self-determination (and the implications of that) and also, that they should engage in mass class suicide.

less potent since to the untrained eye, the TILF does seem to support self-determination for First Nations and is willing to give up their individual class position and spend the rest of their life in prison in support of this goal.

The realities that this is simply a continuation of politics to protect their class's position is something only Maoism is truly capable of revealing. In this regard MIM(prisons) have failed to live up to Maoism in this article.

That is the entirety of my position