I've been seeing a bad line of thinking in leftist spaces and in myself and I feel the need to call it out.
The western left's demonization of the class unconscious proletariat is a symptom of idealism that seems sadly acceptable in leftist social media spaces. Class consciousness is not an achievement to be proud of, you didn't do it, it happened to you.
Labor aristocracy is not a "sin" of the western working class it is a weapon of the bourgeoisie. Unique material conditions are what lead each of us to class consciousness not some sort of moral/intellectual/educational supremacy. The limited class consciousness in the west's working class is not an inherit flaw in the masses but a failure of the class conscious to conduct effective agitation. (the word "failure" is not a condemnation but recognition that we have been unable to succeed against the overwhelming power of the imperialist bourgeoisie.)
This extends to demonization of the troops. Yes members of the western armed forces actively benefit from imperialism and do horrific things supporting imperialism but they do this out of a response to their material conditions not because they are evil. That is not to say they are absolved of their crimes. It means many of them could be redeemable.
We have all had liberal and imperialist ideas that we now recognize are wrong. We must be willing to accept those who admit the faults of their past who are willing to fight for a better future. Anyone refusing to forgive comrades who admit to a flawed past is being dishonest about their own flaws. They are engaging in ideological moral supremacy. It is not a dialectical materialists position to refuse something changing into its opposite.
Again this is not a call to absolve the complicit but instead a call to remind us that we have all been complicit in some way and we are the proletariat not above them.
Talks With Mao Yüan-hsin July 5, 1964
| THE CHAIRMAN (staring angrily at Mao Yüan-hsin):
|YÜAN-HSIN:
|THE CHAIRMAN:
(The Chairman also talked about the third criterion, saying:) When you people hold a meeting, how do you hold it? You are a squad leader; how does one go about being a squad leader? When everyone criticizes you, can you accept it? Can you accept their criticisms even if they are wrong? Can you accept a false and unjust charge? If you cannot accept it, then how can you unite people? You must especially learn to work with people who disagree with you. If you like to have people praise you, if you like to have honey on your lips, and songs to your glory in your ears, that is the most dangerous thing, and that is exactly what you do like.
(In talking about the fourth criterion, the Chairman said:) Do you unite with the masses or not? Is it not the case that you spend your time with the sons and daughters of cadres, and look down on other people? You must let people talk, and not be satisfied with letting one person settle everything.
(In talking about the fifth criterion, the Chairman said:) In this respect you have already made some progress, you have engaged in a bit of self-criticism, but it’s barely a beginning, you mustn’t think everything is all right.
(Afterwards, the Chairman once again talked about the work at the Institute: The most fundamental defect of your Institute is that you have not applied the ‘four firsts’. Didn’t you say you wanted to study Marxism-Leninism? What method of study do you employ? How much can you learn merely by relying on listening to lectures? The most important thing is to go and learn from practice.
My own thoughts: If you're trying to convince Imperialists to side with you, the best you can hope for is neutrality in most cases really. If you push them further it's like talking to a parent about why their child doesn't talk to them. This conversation requires too much spine to handle. They will immediately short circuit and start moralizing.
That's what human being are like, in our age. The path of least resistance. This is not an inevitability and it won't always be like this, but right now we're going through a slow decomposition of the core, the violence of the periphery is accelerating this decomposition and sooner or later a sort of plague will burst open. All the trauma and hardship gathered down there since the establishment of settler colonial nation, that has never been addressed, it will be unable to be contained and burst. They didn't want to deal with it because it's too much, so it just gets bigger and they try to put colorful stickers and blue tape on rusted pipes they don't want to fix.
They can't imagine a future where they actually stand in unity. The best they can hope for is add another layer of paint, add another layer of paint, let the mold grow under, add another layer of paint.
Edited for spelling mistakes.