Submitted by hogposting in chapotraphouse

Genuflection to Orthodoxy

Many on the U.S. Left have exhibited a Soviet bashing and Red baiting that matches anything on the Right in its enmity and crudity. Listen to Noam Chomsky holding forth about "left intellectuals" who try to "rise to power on the backs of mass popular movements" and "then beat the people into submission .... You start off as basically a Leninist who is going to be part of the Red bureaucracy. You see later that power doesn't lie that way, and you very quickly become an ideologist of the right. ... We're seeing it right now in the [former J Soviet Union. The same guys who were communist thugs two years back, are now running banks and [are] enthusiastic free marketeers and praising Americans" (Z Magazine, 10/95).

Chomsky's imagery is heavily indebted to the same U.S. corporate political culture he so frequently criticizes on other issues. In his mind, the revolution was betrayed by a coterie of "communist thugs" who merely hunger for power rather than wanting the power to end hunger. In fact, the communists did not "very quickly" switch to the Right but struggled in the face of a momentous onslaught to keep Soviet socialism alive for more than seventy years. To be sure, in the Soviet Union's waning days some, like Boris Yeltsin, crossed over to capitalist ranks, but others continued to resist free-market incursions at great cost to themselves, many meeting their deaths during Yeltsin's violent repression of the Russian parliament in 1993.

Some leftists and others fall back on the old stereotype of powerhungry Reds who pursue power for power's sake without regard for actual social goals. If true, one wonders why, in country after country, these Reds side with the poor and powerless often at great risk and sacrifice to themselves, rather than reaping the rewards that come with serving the well-placed.

For decades, many left-leaning writers and speakers in the United States have felt obliged to establish their credibility by indulging in anticommunist and anti-Soviet genuflection, seemingly unable to give a talk or write an article or book review on whatever political subject without injecting some anti-Red sideswipe. The intent was, and still is, to distance themselves from the Marxist-Leninist Left.

Adam Hochschild, a liberal writer and publisher, warned those on the Left who might be lackadaisical about condemning existing communist societies that they "weaken their credibility" ( Guardian, 5/23/84). In other words, to be credible opponents of the cold war, we first had to join in cold war condemnations of communist societies. Ronald Radosh urged that the peace movement purge itself of communists so that it not be accused of being communist ( Guardian, 3/16/83). If I understand Radosh: To save ourselves from anticommunist witchhunts, we should ourselves become witchhunters.

Purging the Left of communists became a longstanding practice, having injurious effects on various progressive causes. For instance, in 1 949 some twelve unions were ousted from the CIO because they had Reds in their leadership. The purge reduced CIO membership by some 1. 7 million and seriously weakened its recruitment drives and political clout. In the late 1 940s, to avoid being "smeared" as Reds, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a supposedly progressive group, became one of the most vocally anticommunist organizations.

The strategy did not work. ADA and others on the Left were still attacked for being communist or soft on communism by those on the Right. Then and now, many on the Left have failed to realize that those who fight for social change on behalf of the less-privileged elements of society will be Red-baited by conservative elites whether they are communists or not. For ruling interests, it makes little difference whether their wealth and power is challenged by "communist subversives" or "loyal American liberals." All are lumped together as more or less equally abhorrent.

Even when attacking the Right, left critics cannot pass up an opportunity to flash their anticommunist credentials. So Mark Green writes in a criticism of President Ronald Reagan that "when presented with a situation that challenges his conservative catechism, like an unyielding Marxist-Leninist, [Reagan] will change not his mind but the facts." While professing a dedication to fighting dogmatism "both of the Right and Left," individuals who perform such de rigueur genuflections reinforce the anticommunist dogma. Redbaiting leftists contributed their share to the climate of hostility that has given U.S. leaders such a free hand in waging hot and cold wars against communist countries and which even today makes a progressive or even liberal agenda difficult to promote.

A prototypic Red-basher who pretended to be on the Left was George Orwell. In the middle of World War II, as the Soviet Union was fighting for its life against the Nazi invaders at Stalingrad, Orwell announced that a "willingness to criticize Russia and Stalin is the test of intellectual honesty. It is the only thing that from a literary intellectual's point of view is really dangerous" (Monthly Review, 5/83 ). Safely ensconced within a virulently anticommunist society, Orwell (with Orwellian doublethink) characterized the condemnation of communism as a lonely courageous act of defiance. Today, his ideological progeny are still at it, offering themselves as intrepid left critics of the Left, waging a valiant struggle against imaginary Marxist-Leninist-Stalinist hordes.

Sorely lacking within the U.S. Left is any rational evaluation of the Soviet Union, a nation that endured a protracted civil war and a multinational foreign invasion in the very first years of its existence, and that two decades later threw back and destroyed the Nazi beast at enormous cost to itself. In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish- while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world. And the Soviet Union, along with Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic, and Cuba, provided vital assistance to national liberation movements in countries around the world, including Nelson Mandela's African National Congress in South Africa.

Left anticommunists remained studiously unimpressed by the dramatic gains won by masses of previously impoverished people under communism. Some were even scornful of such accomplishments. I recall how in Burlington Vermont, in 1971, the noted anticommunist anarchist, Murray Bookchin, derisively referred to my concern for "the poor little children who got fed under communism" (his words).

https://eastsidemarxism.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/michael-parenti-blackshirts-and-reds-rational-fascism-and-the-overthrow-of-communism.pdf

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Comments

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Ganggang wrote

Please remove this cringe

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hogposting OP wrote

Please post hog

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Ganggang wrote

Just go to the tankie reddit clone. They have one somewhere I forget the name

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PringlesCaliphate wrote

The main thing about chapo was that every leftist could post there

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Ganggang wrote (edited )

Leftism is a spook. I don’t have any unity with people that defend or promote authoritarianism and state capitalism. I don’t want him banned but I’m suggesting he’d be more at home with other tankies rather than shitting up raddle.

Like if you want to be respectful and have a discussion sure but why go to an anarchist space and post authors that defend regimes that murder anarchists at us? Like wouldn’t you be better off on the other one? It seems mutually beneficial that parenti stans go to the other clones

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PringlesCaliphate wrote

There are other forums within Raddle that are anarchist focused, this is a forum about a podcast, not an anarchist space.

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suma wrote

Yeah but it's not a tankie podcast so why does ML literature have any place on a comedy demsoc podcast forum?

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Ganggang wrote

Yeah but raddle in general has an anarchist post left bent. If you disagree with that why don’t we do everyone a favor and go to the one with the parenti bent

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PringlesCaliphate wrote

You want this place to be abandoned again, don't you? We had both on r/cth and we can have both here too.

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Ganggang wrote

I’d rather have less activity from people that I like. I want people to come, and hopefully the people who don’t vibe with the general sites culture will be filtered out. Leaving an increase of people who I like. I’m attempting to expedite the process.

The old cth was kinda shitty tbh. This is a blessing in disguise, now is the time to gatekeep and let in a steady flow of cool people

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PringlesCaliphate wrote

Gatekeeping and sectarianism, two very good strategies to achieve a "steady flow of cool people" coming in. Congratulations buddy, good luck

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Ganggang wrote

I mean honestly it’s fine if they believe something different but like just be respectful at least don’t post this shit like it’s gospel

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