Thread by @RodericDay

wrt the work of analyzing and learning from the failures of Sanders, Corbyn, NDP:

all the power "the left" ever had in "the west" was concessions resulting from capital fearing the USSR. there's nothing these figureheads can do or say that would have made any major difference.

researchgate.net/publication/33…

stop examining with a microscope where you suspect they went wrong rhetorically, where they forged the wrong alliance, where they said the wrong thing. there's no magic incantation you can chant to go back to the pre-Blair, pre-Clinton era.

socdem politicians before the 80s, people like FDR, weren't buoyed by their charisma or skill. they were buoyed by the material fact that they were a nicer alternative for capitalists than what the USSR represented. the USSR was the bite to their bark.

the USSR was to socdems and syndicalists what Malcolm X was to MLK Jr.

without the former to absorb the hits, the latter is a sitting duck. FDR/MLK are sanctified today to ensure that we keep looking for a messiah instead of understanding historical and tactical complexity.

example:

the post-war CCF once wrote admiringly about the Red Army, saw Canada’s wartime economic planning as a great argument for the superiority of central planning, authored pieces like “Political Action for the 99%” in 1943

h/t @BertaAdvantage

albertaadvantagepod.com/2019/03/15/cor…

Quebec (via PQ) and Scotland (via SNP) experience a degree of success in implementing pro-social reforms because of the maneuverability and media afforded to them by the project of independence and nationalism

such tools are unavailable or unused by anglo figureheads

which leads to the question of where is the left on China?

bloodsuckers such as Bloomberg and Yglesias are quicker on the draw and have offered pro-neoliberalism praise

there's a propaganda project underway to ascribe all Chinese success to capitalism, all issues to communism

this is embarrassing for the left, who never invoke China to demand domestic pro-social progress

communists in Cuba, Venezuela and pre-coup Bolivia work with China as leftists

meanwhile we're begging the capitalist war criminals at Labour and the DNC to let us collaborate

via constantly conceding to bad faith smears, via expressing no skepticism about CIA propaganda, via opening arguments by explaining exactly where we will not go, we self-sabotage

the threat of revolution matters, and has a big symbolic component to go with the material one

Bolivia has shown that a socialist-indigenous anti-imperialist alliance is powerful

I think collaboration between socialists and first nations, the blockades in solidarity with the Wet'suwet'en, showed a way forward

China, unlike the USA, supports revolutionary states like Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia

There's potential for a world where people can revolt and experiment without American sabotage

The sinophobic demand that China creates and exports a universal model is senseless