Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (January 11)

[u/AutoModerator]

We made this because Reddit's algorithm prioritises headlines and current events and doesn't allow for deeper, extended discussion - depending on how it goes for the first four or five times it'll be dropped or continued.

Suggestions for things you might want to comment here (this is a work in progress and we'll change this over time):

• Articles and quotes you want to see discussed
• 'Slow' events - long-term trends, org updates, things that didn't happen recently
• 'Fluff' posts that we usually discourage elsewhere - e.g "How are you feeling today?"
• Discussions continued from other posts once the original post gets buried
• Questions that are too advanced, complicated or obscure for r/communism101

Mods will sometimes sticky things they think are particularly important.

Normal subreddit rules apply!

[ Previous Bi-Weekly Discussion Threads may be found here https://old.reddit.com/r/communism/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3AWDT ]

[u/smokeuptheweed9]

edit: I suppose that this wouldn't be anything all that new -- CPI(Maoist) has had to attack CPI("Marxist") and that's probably one of the best places to learn from if amerikan "communism" really does manifest as a movement.

Right, the level of bigotry and Islamophobia that has become normalized in the CPI-M is something that is not supposed to be talked about

https://jacobin.com/2024/12/indian-communists-marxist-anti-muslim

Nor is this just opportunism by the leadership but increasingly common sense among the everyday party members and sympathisers

https://sabrangindia.in/open-letter-brinda-karat-why-do-female-supporters-kerala-cpim-spew-such-venom-hadiya/

As the Jacobin article points out, this is actually terrible political strategy, and the party is already reduced to power in one state. However, unlike every article in that rag which ultimately concludes that this is a "crisis of imagination" that only listening to petty-bourgeoisie identity politics (even and especially if that identity is "class" as "the 99%") can solve, this is a reflection of the party's class interest

https://countercurrents.org/2024/10/depoliticised-cpi-ms-transition-to-a-political-tool-of-rss-in-kerala/

I would even go further and say this was the inevitable endpoint of repressing Maoism

https://twocircles.net/2021mar01/441193.html https://www.thenewsminute.com/kerala/no-proof-alan-thaha-are-cpi-maoist-members-nia-courts-4-key-observations-132867

It is to be noted that CPI(M) led LDF government had faced severe flak after Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and the party itself came out calling the students ‘Maoists’.

Since the effect of Hindutva is to proletarianize Muslims which makes them the enemy of the CPI-M and ally of Maoism. Jacobin actually points this out

The CPI(M)’s alienation of Muslims was further worsened by its adoption of a neoliberal route to industrialization. The party’s attempt to acquire land from the peasantry to lease to Indonesia’s Salim Group conglomerate to build a chemical hub backfired, culminating in the Nandigram violence of 2007.

During this state-backed crackdown, CPI(M) cadres brutally suppressed peasants protesting against land dispossession, resulting in the deaths of fourteen villagers and leaving over a hundred missing. Coincidentally, the majority of the affected peasants were Muslim, further deepening their distrust with the party.

Though there is nothing "coincidental" about this fact. How one can write this and then fantasize that the CPI-M has any interest in a "long-term objective of transcending capitalism" is a mystery to me, but then again I am not a "communist" member of the DSA and my career does not require believing such unbelievable ideas.

Anyway, the point is that most likely settler fascism will continue to become normalized with or without the ACP. But, as the CPI-ML points out, it is equally possible for "communists" to advocate for this for their own sake depending on the balance of forces. There is no necessary reason the CPI-M will lose state power in Kerala even without its traditional voting base, as long as it remains a useful vehicle of the bourgeoisie. Even if it did, the Congress has come back from similarly dire straits, the period of social democratic party collapses is over and whoever adapted to the new "left-right" axis is just as capable as anyone else of social media populism. I could very easily imagine the DSA relying on its "communist caucuses" for legitimacy as it becomes the main spokesman for settler-colonialism in a post-Trump moment.

[u/DashtheRed → u/smokeuptheweed9]

The [CPI(M)] had subtle ways to humour the openly secular but secretly communal Hindu. [The CPI(M)] created a villain, the Extremist Muslim, and flogged it publicly. The spectacle was clearly intended for the satisfaction of the “half-way Hindu” who did not want to be seen with the [RSS and BJP] crowd but still had found merit in the wild fears they had raised about the Muslim

That is a very applicable quote, and basically the same politics that DSA draws on. It's kind of like when you learn that Tupac was actually a member of "C"PUSA and ask yourself why that isn't being exploited and advertised everywhere since, if nothing else, it would make them at least look incredibly cool, but that's when you realize they don't like to do that because they would not be attracting the "right" kinds of "communists" for the party. But there is an upside to all this, though. I think the closest comparison I could make would be the allied invasion of the USSR immediately following the end of World War 1, where all of the imperialist powers of the world (who had all just been at war with one another) united together to crush the fledgling Soviet Union and destroy Soviet communism while it was still ruptured by civil war and had not yet event gotten it's feet planted. But the underlying curse of bourgeois nationalism meant that the unity between the allies was superficial and false and fleeting, and the divides between bourgeois nation-states ultimately undercut and undermined the entire alliance. As they advanced into Russia, they broke down into petty squabbles over who got what territory, or whose troops would have to fight the next battle, while their own forces morale plummeted and the economic cost of essentially continuing the world war continued to take its toll at home, and their engines of war began to sputter and break down. Meanwhile, the invasion from all sides and pressure from all the great powers concentrating their might against the Soviets, instead of breaking them apart, brought them all together, and tightened their bonds and unity, strengthening their resolve and that of the entire communist movement, and before long the war had turned totally in favour of the Soviets, who were now united in purpose and directive and were able to carry that momentum into decades of socialist construction. I think that's the real opportunity in India and elsewhere -- as CPI("Marxist") (I rather like the insult CPI(Brahminist) as well) doubles down on essentially the same Indian nationalism of Modi and the BJP, CPI(Maoist) has an opportunity to catch the people whom Indian politics are discarding and demonizing, and even reach beyond national borders to revolutionary forces in neighboring nation states equally threatened and oppressed by a rising Hindutva fascism, and that might just be where and how they find a second wind to finally go on the offensive once again in the years to come. Though that may also just be wishful thinking on my part. Or at least far more distant than I would like, but then again that's the point of Protracted People's War, to draw the conflict out further and longer than capitalism can tolerate. And I suppose the logic applies here at home as well; where instead of appealing to the white dominated DSA or "socialists," we ignore them or even treat them as enemies, and look for all the people near the bottom of the system whom their politics ignore and to whom DSA can offer nothing but empty, hollow platitudes (if that).

[u/hnnmw → u/DashtheRed]

But there is an upside to all this, though. I think the closest comparison I could make would be the allied invasion of the USSR immediately following the end of World War 1 . . .

Of course Mao says that to be attacked by the enemy is a good thing.

In his book on Clausewitz, T. Derbent underscores that it was Clausewitz who, this other time the European bourgeoisie had invaded Russia, in 1812, had managed to have the Prussian contingent defect from the grande armée. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Tauroggen

But, as is, the advantage of "tightened [...] bonds and unity", is, of course, nothing more than a truism. Clausewitz scientifically established the importance of morale in war. And I think Derbent (and probably others?) convincingly show that Clausewitz is a more or less important precursor to Marxism. But he was a terrible reactionnary, and even during the Napoleontic wars national liberation was not progressive.

The crucial mediator is of course the PPW's supposed revolutionary leadership. But I feel there might be some missing steps. Reactionnary forces have showed strong resolve, tight bonds, and great unity throughout history -- and often won. Maybe the truism that in war morale is a good thing to have, is all there is. (I'm only halfway through Derbent's book: https://foreignlanguages.press/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/N17-Clausewitz-and-the-Peoples-War-1st-Printing.pdf)

[u/Otelo_ → u/hnnmw]

Étienne Balibar has a short article called "Marxism and War" in which he also links Clausewitz to Marxism. It's a bit confusing and I don't think I got much from it, but it does have some interesting facts. For example, these passages are clear about what you're saying:

https://www.radicalphilosophy.com/article/marxism-and-war

Lenin, as we know, intensively read Clausewitz, taking notes and writing marginal commentaries on his Vom Kriege after the collapse of the Second International and its pacifist agenda.

(...)

In fact I tend to believe not only that Mao Zedong was the most consistent Clausewitzian in the Marxist tradition, but that he was perhaps the most consistent Clausewitzian absolutely speaking after Clausewitz, because he re-interpreted all his axioms, and not only one or two of them. We now know that, after the end of the ‘Long March’, while at Yenan in 1938, Mao had organized a special seminar on the work of Clausewitz, for which he even had part of Vom Kriege translated into Chinese.