white western leftists will literally be like “yes I’m a socialist… I just hate everything that socialism has done in the world and I’ll gladly defend anti-communist efforts when they don’t directly effect me”

The pure (libertarian) socialists’ ideological anticipations remain untainted by existing practice. They do not explain how the manifold functions of a revolutionary society would be organized, how external attack and internal sabotage would be thwarted, how bureaucracy would be avoided, scarce resources allocated, policy differences settled, priorities set, and production and distribution conducted. Instead, they offer vague statements about how the workers themselves will directly own and control the means of production and will arrive at their own solutions through creative struggle. No surprise then that the pure socialists support every revolution except the ones that succeed.

Free college and legal weed. Anything to the left of that is gommunism vulvulzula gorillion dead

Yes, I acknowledge the system is broken, our democratic rights are actively being whittled away as we are pulled deeper and deeper into the maw of a beast that treats us as expendable resources meant only to line the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. We’re given the smallest necessary concessions by a slew of invariably corrupt political hacks to placate the masses and obfuscate atrocity after atrocity in their endless quest for the violent exploitation of every living being below them.

THAT’S WHY I VOTED DARK BRANDON THIS ELECTION, BLUE WAVE ROLLLLLL

Western Marxism Loves Purity and Martyrdom, But Not Real Revolution (2020) by Jones Manoel

There is a great tendency in the eastern left, according to Perry Anderson, to separate western and eastern Marxism. Western Marxism is basically a kind of Marxism which has, as a key characteristic, never exercised political power. It is a Marxism that has, more and more frequently, concerned itself with philosophical and aesthetic issues. It has pulled back, for example, from criticism of political economy and the problem of the conquest of political power. More and more it has taken a historic distance from the concrete experiences of socialist transition in the Soviet Union, China, Viet Nam, Cuba and so forth. This western Marxism considers itself to be superior to eastern Marxism because it hasn’t tarnished Marxism by transforming it into an ideology of the State like, for example, Soviet Marxism, and it has never been authoritarian, totalitarian or violent. This Marxism preserves the purity of theory to the detriment of the fact that it has never produced a revolution anywhere on the face of the Earth – this is a very important point.

Every movement that appears to stray a bit from these “pure” models that were created a priori is explained through the concept of betrayal, or is explained as “state capitalism.” Therefore, nothing is socialism and everything is state capitalism. Nothing is socialist transition and everything is state capitalism. The revolution is only a revolution during that glorious moment of taking political power. Starting from the moment of building a new social order, its over. Revolution is always a political process which has two moments: a moment of destruction of the old capitalist order and taking power, and a moment of building a new order. The contradictions, the problems, the failures, the mistakes, sometimes even the crimes, mainly happen during this moment of building the new order. So when the time comes to evaluate the building of a new social order – which is where, apparently, the practice always appears to stray from the purity of theory – the specific appears corrupted in the face of the universal. It is at this point that the idea of betrayal is evoked, that the idea of counter revolution is evoked, and that the idea of State Capitalism appears in order to preserve the purity of theory.