It seems most cross tendency engagement devolves in to fights between leftcoms/anarchists vs AES supporters or “Dengists” vs Maoists. Anyone can point at each other and say “they started it” and avoid responsibilities. We agree on 90% of stuff but Anarchists decide to randomly call us tankies and we feel the need to defend ourselves or else look like we lost without an argument. Likewise we make memes about Anarkiddies and write texts denouncing them and they feel the same. Among scientific socialists we see China as an ally and an example to learn from while Maoists want to call out “revisionism.” There seems to be a contradiction between the history of different socialist experiments and disagreements not really mattering to our own conditions and those experiments also being vital learning experiences for us.
It’s strange to think about how we pretty much agree with Patsocs on more than almost any other tendency yet they are almost useless because they don’t understand the basic dialectical method and why have our positions beyond aesthetics and thus cannot understand the basic material conditions of this country.
We can keep trying to bring more people into our own sects and hope they do work for our own type of socialism irl, but if we’re so divided how can this happen. Of course we should all just log off and do things irl, but then some will fall into the trap of either larping or just helping their own friends without the wider goal of revolution.
We all need to remember that the feds let us speak because we spend all our time bickering. How can we unify as a revolutionary left? There are projects irl for trying to find unity as scientific socialists like ChunkaLuta, but it would be nice to be able to do the same online. In a way I’m just wishing everyone could just listen to revleft and everything could work out, but what can Lemmygrad and hexbear do for this vision?
Frankly if we're talking about the western continents, it's because nobody has seriously studied the history and conditions of the land underneath their feet. PatSocs are superficially "close" to the Communists here because they do zero investigation of the internal structures of the continent, and view outward facing Imperialism from the Americans as an obstacle to "American Socialism". So like many of the other parties in the US, they focus on protesting foreign intervention.
Hot take, the other parties are pretty much the same. Where they differ is that PatSocs dream of a great assimilation into American so-called culture, so subjugation of Black and Indigenous peoples is a focal point, and it's why they are willing to work with the right opportunistically. The other parties expect to take full control of the leftovers of America, but with "respecting treaties" and giving "self-determination" and the ability to "secede", secede from what tho? If the PatSocs are settler-chauvinists then this is settler-blindness. PatSocs succeed in grifting because the other parties have yet to put out real theories on how to destroy the empire from within, so they just appeal to the American (or Canadian, Mexican) chauvinist extremes.
In ML terms the settlers are not the subject of revolution. National Liberation for the prisons of nations beneath the Empire is primary. Policing, enclosure, ecological exploitation. Spontaneity from the colonized masses and even Anarchists is focused at the symptoms of settler-colonialism, and until Communists study their conditions and give direction to these people we can only alienate and frustrate them when telling them to vote or show up to a protest at city hall. It's extremely frustrating for Natives when they ask for solidarity from settlers against megacorps looting their lands only for the unions to back the corps for jobs and then for Communists to agitate about unionization and maybe a "land acknowledgement".
Communists need to connect with the workers being gentrified out of their homes, connect with the Natives of their locales, unite these struggles, that's the unity. What we think about China is a discussion to be had in a party that comes together to liberate the colonized nations. Settler-chauvinism, and setter-blindness (I also like "Left-PatSoc") are the deal-breakers for unity.
National Chauvinism, Capitalism, and Patriarchy make up Colonialism. Gender based oppression in most places is directly rooted in Colonialism. Decolonization means attacking all fronts meaning we cannot negotiate with chauvinists, opportunists, and sexists (whether male chauvinist, TERF, NB-phobic, homophobic, etc.).