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John Smith railing against ML and CPC, knowledgeable comrades please comment (edit: also Zak Cope is a capitalist apologist now, WTF) (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by Red_Scare@lemmygrad.ml to c/genzedong@lemmygrad.ml

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"Imperialism in the 21st century" was a very eye opening read for me and I was surprised to see this from Smith in an interview, comrades please help me understand:

“Marxist-Leninist” refers to the ideology espoused by the bureaucratic rulers of the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China and all those around the world who look to them for leadership, but in my opinion, there is no Marxism or Leninism in so-called “Marxism-Leninism”. We cannot get anywhere until we call things by their true names, so I insist on describing both the Moscow or Beijing varieties of these ideologies as Stalinist. This might upset some people or be misinterpreted as factional name-calling, but the alternative is to perpetuate an extremely harmful falsehood—one which is energetically promoted by bourgeois politicians and opinion-formers of all types, from the liberal left to the far right, all of whom are aware of how much damage they can do to the revolutionary workers’ movement by identifying socialism, communism and the liberatory ideas of Marx and Lenin with the disgusting brutality and corruption of the bureaucratic castes which once ruled the Soviet Union and which continue to rule over China (indeed, the capitalist ruling class presently in power in Russia is almost entirely composed of former “Marxist-Leninists”).

“Marxism-Leninism” served the rulers of the USSR and PRC not as a guide to action, but as a cloak of deception, a means of legitimizing their rule. They claimed allegiance to the same theories and philosophies as do I, but their doctrine of “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism stands in the clearest possible contradiction with everything that Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin stood for.

https://mronline.org/2019/03/19/john-smith-on-imperialism-part-1/

[Edit] Following from this I looked to my other eye-opening author, Zak Cope (Divided World, Divided Class) and found this where he disavows his entire work and all anticapitalism, just read the abstract and note 1:

https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-031-25399-7_82-2

What the fuck is happening?

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[–] CountryBreakfast@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 1 month ago

I don't think his criticisms of the USSR or prominent cold war narratives actually helps him answer his question very well. Does he think that the Russian Federation would not or has not attempted to coexist with western powers? Is Russia no longer white now that it isn't communist or something? Oh, and we are lacking leaders like Fidel etc.,.... who took support from the USSR. Where such leaders just erasing their own struggle in favor of a East-West struggle by doing this? Were they racist against themselves by doing so?

Moscow is, geographically speaking, part of the West, the eastern edge of white Europe

A bit exhausting but needs some grounding to set this point up if he can make it better. The struggle against continuity with the Russian Empire is real, but I think there needs to be some way of addressing or challenging what the revolution achieved and what it means before we call Moscow the edge of white Europe. My understanding is that Eastern Europe has long functioned as a kind of periphery/semi-periphery to Western Europe. Interestingly enough, Cope writes about this haha. I don't necessarily agree that Eastern Europe is white in the same way whiteness manifests in the west. I wish there was more clarity on this because its not like I don't already have "this is a bit russiaphobic" already in the chamber, almost like I'm being baited so just make the point.

entirely collapsed into the so-called East-West conflict

By who? And who recognizes this? I'm not saying there isn't a good point in here, I just feel like we are erasing what the rest of the world has to say just to make this point that the USSR failed. Maybe others around the world agree to an extent that liberation efforts have been flattened. Does he talk about this more in his book? I haven't read it all. It does have some third world orientation but I'm 99% sure it was all quantitative.

Liberation struggles and revolutionary movements from Asia to Africa to Latin America are regarded as mere pawns of Moscow, without grievances of their own, without any agency of their own — this is not only absurd, it is also transparently racist.

Seems potentially flattening of third world experiences. Again, who regards these struggles so cynically? The struggling masses?

I don't disagree that the cold war is often used to oversimplify complex global relations or that the USSR was ultimately unsuccessful in the liberation project it espoused. Its just that if you are going to leverage the global south like this, I think it should be more apparent that Smith is officially grounded by the right voices. Otherwise, it comes across as sanctimonious, that we should be centering this group that agrees with him because they are poorer or less "powerful" than the USSR or something.