In their first comment too. I mean I know Reddit is a cesspool and I know r/communism is Gonzalo Central, but damn, it’s infected far. I went back on the platform to promote my articles because despite the malding, it drives a lot of traffic lol. Otherwise I would never touch that website (though the TrueAnon subreddit loves them and it creates interesting discussions, I’m not gonna lump them in with the rest of Reddit like that).
I forced that person in a struggle session over their take and they moved the goalposts until they decided to disengage lol. But it’s okay, they know what they said.
If you want to read the exchange: https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/comments/182vnkk/the_end_of_ukraine_and_after_the_war_in_ukraine/kalpc0v/?context=10000
Damn. Their last “stance” was like them eagerly byting on a cyanide capsule after somebody asked them for the time.
Geopolitics […] is obviously reactionary to everyone who understands Marxism
TIL Lenin didn’t understand Marxism and was reactionary
The funny part is class struggle is not even the biggest component of Marxism (it shares that spot with diamat and the LTV as per Lenin). I don’t even call myself a geopol analyst or anything like that either lol.
lol I just realized it was them that brought up the term in the conversation. In their defense it says in your substack description "I write about geopolitics,… " so maybe that’s where they got it from. But I agree calling you a “geopolitical analyst” was putting words in your mouth for the purpose of slander.
Was Lenin talking about the impacts of those concepts?
Bc I would even consider diamat foundational to CS (which would only strengthen your point)
Anyway there is a more central issue in their argument though:
If I make a good faith attempt at understanding the point of this other person: they could be talking about CS bc of its central role in driving historical progress. In that sense their focus on CS (vs LTV/diamat) is understandable, “replacing” that with “national struggle” is not admissible for a marxist.
But it can’t be denied that what Lenin (the staunch geopolitical analyst that he was) did constituted an extension to Marxism that recognizes state/imperial competition (what they mean when they say “national struggle”) as a driving historical force. Considering nation states are a tool of the ruling class this doesn’t constitute a break from Marxism. So they were creating a false dichotomy.
Lenins additon has some grave consequences however when it comes to interpreting how class struggle manifests. Some trots apparently consider the Palestinian struggle in an utterly perverted way, where the Palestinian working class needs to rise up against their ruling class (and they don’t mean the Israeli class that is ruling over them), while a Leninist correctly identifies thei national struggle as anti-imperialist and consistent with class struggle overall.
So maybe the person you encountered was just affected by trot brainrot but I believe they were just not liking your opinions shying away from an argument and cowardly retreating into ostensibly principled territory, a behaviour that always creates a shitload of confusion and toxicity, pushes a movement towards dogmatism and harms the ideological struggle in general. This sounds exaggerated in this case, but I really can’t stand this “reaching for a priciple” just to feel safe. Same reason why they immediately compared you to fascists. Whoever reads this, don’t fucking do this.
Of course Marxists can write/discuss about quantitaive production of munition, the depleation of weapons stockpile, logistics in war. Barring us from doing that is barring us from assessing at what is going on, in a way it is them that are turning away from scientific socialism and from Marxsim towards idealism.
It’s been a while since I read that article, but Lenin was very clear that basically all three parts are fundamental to Marxism.
In this way class struggle, LTV and diamat all inform our analysis of geopolitics or in other words, what’s happening right now in the world.
The most charitable argument we could make of OP’s is that they refuse geopolitics in the liberal meaning. But it seems they’re just completely rejecting the concept of geopolitics, much like one would reject imperialism based on its liberal definition. The word Geopolitics now is just an easy way to say “what’s happening in the world and why” and I don’t see any reason we can’t use it our own way.
Sometimes I feel for some marxists if you don’t specifically spell out dialectics and materialism they’ll think you’re being unmarxist. It might just be caused by a lack of familiarity with marxism.
I also use geopolitics instead of imperialism exactly not to scare off people too quickly lol. I don’t intend to write solely for marxists because they can read Marx and other authors, they don’t need me specifically for that. But I was a bit disappointed with some anti-imperialist writers that I follow who have the correct line (or close to correct) on most things, but then can’t imagine any solution to it. Or they suddenly start talking about the ‘globalists’ out of nowhere.
But well, I’m still finding my voice and who exactly I’m writing for. But I can’t imagine a world where it’s better to have fewer anti-imperialist writers.
It’s funny you mention Trots, I was also saying somewhere people who focus solely on the class struggle are doing what Trots do lol. Their best analysis of Russia-Ukraine (for Trots I mean) is “what about the proletariat in both countries?” But what about a stronger NATO that emerges victorious? What about the emboldened and equipped UA fascist cells that will export themselves out of Ukraine and terrorize Europe with Javelins? Yeah Russia needs to have another socialist revolution, but what can we do until then? Sometimes I find this kind of analysis very defeatist.
