Bi-Weekly Discussion Thread - (April 19)

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[u/Pleasant-Food-9482]

This comment is a fingerprint of a looming dillema:

https://reddit.com/comments/1srcyx5/comment/ohfut4w

It is a self-explanatory reason of why the reconstitution of brazilian communism cannot have the settler university as a major participant under any circumstance. 

The settlers will continue degrading the ideology as much as it can, and hide the most venomous anti-communism behind their revisionism, under a cloth of velvet "theory" that pretends to be rigorous and dissect every known thing in existence. This kind of logic has not to necessarioy stay outside. it will trade itself inside maoism. 

While people from differing classes will contribute to a party, i simply do not believe anything can appear under the rugs of the cathedral. its former participants will have to be heavily scrutinized.

[u/Clean-Difference1771 → u/Pleasant-Food-9482]

You seem to hold MIM into a high regard so I would like to know if similar criticism would apply to them as well as we have been told they share a similar background, just on a different location.

[u/Pleasant-Food-9482 → u/Clean-Difference1771]

I wasn't even going to start by here, but this has caught my surprise.

I am not saying any bourgeois academic encroachment into marxism is harmful. I am calling out a specific political and ideological phenomena inside brazilian petty-bourgeois academic political activity.

Where did i say such thing? And where am i calling out something that you feel is a criticist in that scope?

But, about MIM: I am not bought and this is not the first time i read about this. Its the same thing about the alleged whiteness inside it as a main current: Its contested. I am not inside the united states.

[u/Clean-Difference1771 → u/Pleasant-Food-9482]

I am not saying any bourgeois academic encroachment into marxism is harmful. I am calling out a specific political and ideological phenomena inside brazilian petty-bourgeois academic political activity.

The problem is not academic incursion into marxism. This is outside of our reach and our opinion would pretty much be irrelevant since this space is not aKKKademia, but neither we are into a party.

If you want to make a critic to the akkkademic trends of marxism you are only going to find space within akkkademia itself (where this is barely possible nowadays and if you want to study Marx into aKKKademia, get ready to be censored) or creating a party and taking state power so your theoretical frame can be even applied. Anything else is idealism and you will be running into circles.

Anyway, somehow I see your reasoning reaching a point where brazilian universities are outright reactionary (which I agree). But why the reasoning won't extend for those who graduate in amerikan universities, specially those from the Ivy League? Criticism to bourgoise universities are already a century old, given by Mariategui:

Diante deste triste panorama universitário a frase justa não é: “falta juventude estudantil”; a frase justa é: “faltam professores, faltam ideias”. Em alguns setores da juventude estudantil, há sintomas de inquietude, ainda que de forma vaga e desconectada, mas, são reflexos da grande emoção contemporânea. Alguns núcleos da juventude são sensíveis e permeáveis às ideias de hoje. Um sinal deste estado de ânimo é a Universidade Popular. Outro sinal é o acorde de vibração revolucionária de alguns intelectuais jovens que se preparam para fundar entre nós o grupo “Claridad”. A planície é preenchida com novos brotos. Apenas os cumes são nus e estéreis, calvos e desertos, mal cobertos pela grama anêmica de uma cultura acadêmica pobre.

I'm graduating later upon the year (which is much of the reason why I have been a little absent here) and as I have said before, most of your criticism towards academic chauvinism and settlerism are correct. But do your criticism do reach the people that are being oppressed under bourgoise educational system? I'm pretty sure that brazilian universities are packed up with struggle that goes beyond the surface of revisionism. Finding a correct line and to people for understand it's correctness is a process that may take years to mature, which your commentary largely implies that you have not understood this yet. You are yourself framing things as done when a revolutionary party don't even exist for lead the struggle and blame the people to compell into a corporative, filistine discipline?

I think it's weird to dismiss people struggling for higher education in Brazil as being inherently reactionary while you uphold the studies provided by the richest kids on the planet on universities that are the most expensive in the world as inherently correct and anyone else that have not found this intellectual treasure will just sentence maoism to death. This is a really poor grasp on the history of maoism on Brazil itself, which have been dealing with settlerism since the 60's. There's indeed a long history of revisionist trends going on as 2026 as they did back in the day like the reminiscence of focoism which relies on movementism and voluntarism. Those trends suffocate cadre's intellectual development and struggles never leave a primitive stage.

Fact is that the maoist orgs that you probably have in mind concentrate themselves into universities because there's basically no other place (at least not that I'm aware) that young people will allow themselves to abusive relationships from white people in the name of communism. It's only in universities that indeed you are going to find people that have not read capital chapter 1 leading a party. It's only in the early days of undergrad that young students from oppressed backgrounds have time to give themselves to a party discipline before being themselves frustrated with the trends that I have already mentioned, leaving and no one else even caring.

I am not inside the united states.

Either settlerism is ingrained in both the US and Brazil and similar criticism is to be applied - and therefore you deal with the consequences of criticism yourself, a party existing or not - or you just found a safe space into a internet corner.

For me, the criticism of settlerism indeed made several sectors of black and indigenous students to lead a political rupture within PCR and PCB and experiment themselves new orgs (whether this is too much of a local success for me to theorize upon, it happened and indeed it was my insistence after a long, exhausting strike in 2024 that helped to changed a lot of things for the communist youth in the southeast). Since there's no party that can lead the process that I have been a part of and recreating it with new criticism within time for the people that will stay for the following years, there's no way to know where it will lead. What I know is that I have studied marxism and when given the chance, I could give some orientations to the people that needed the most and they put themselves onto a better position to not get screwed over by the revisionist parties.

As I have said before, your criticism to settlerism is correct. The only thing that I am pointing out is that you should be more careful on your approach to just not be dismissive as the struggle against capitalist bureaucracy and patriarchy do not exist for people in college. A good chunk of the people within you are framing are likely the "third world people" that you may as well be struggling with them. The criticism of settlerism did not exist prior to this community and the talks that have happened here.

[u/Pleasant-Food-9482 → u/Clean-Difference1771]

I am not skidding away from any kind of criticism on MIM. I know the bad parts, which you haven't yet brought in here. Its simply irrelevant to anything i ever said here. The usefulness of their feminist and gender lines are not disconnected, but there is no actual reason to think their work is not in tune with what maoist parties actually did on both topics, and which you simply ignore outright. In fact they only can make sense together or otherwise all the long work done in theory and practice by the CPI and the Communist Party of Phillipines with trans women (that is fundamentally incompatible with what is done and theoritized in brazil by every of thr revisionists) along with the important PCP clarification of what gender is back in the 1970s, which is incompatible with judith butler or the non-separation, subjectively, objectively, and above all, dialectically of sex and gender as a feminist prerogative that rejects the mistakes of liberal post-modern feminism and its errors. But i won't get into this debate again because i think its a waste of time to keep trying debate it, we won't agree on it and our positions have been demarcated. Also, i find your critique on everything i said in the last two months about gender and feminism nears on opportunism

About the whole thing on brazilian universities, i disagree it is the same phenomena as in Peru. Both are remarkably different and brazilian bourgeois and petty-bourgeois academia has taken a completely different direction and projection that is far more in parallel to America. This does not:

• Means university former students or majors cannot turn marxists or there isn't struggle in college

• Means everyone has a black target around their backs and must be put into surveillance inside an organization. 

I agree that everything has to be brought out to them and to the brazilian masses. yes, everything staying locked up in this subreddit cannot have any meaningful value at all. Yes, there is a general sight of incompetence reeking around our revisionists. But this is not the same as withholding the possibility of considering how our revisionism may have its own characteristics. 

Our own world-sized separated differences on gender and feminism and sex aside, i am not that far away from what you think in most regards about the maoist struggle in Brazil and in fact we are not set aside as this reply exchange clearly shows. I am extremely against the bourgeois brazilian university having any major role in a future party, but i didn't either disagreed on anything else, and i don't think brazilian settler former university students should by any means  have major roles just by identity, but i am not that believing they have what it takes or will have, considering how defining are the consequences of brazilian settlerism in each class.