this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2026
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Oh this is an easy one. You shouldn't. Solidarity relies on having a shared goal/purpose. We of the global south have diametrically opposed goals to the average western treatlerite "leftist". Obviously there are some genuine leftists in the west but they are far outnumbered unfortunately.
There's a deep unseriousness that permeates western leftist organizing, unfortunately, though I will say that younger generations are beginning to become more serious. Here in the belly of the beast, the US Empire, Gen Z is far more friendly to communism (not socdem "socialism") than any prior generation:
What we are witnessing is the gradual death of imperialism and a drying up of the superprofits used to bribe the labor aristocracy here. There are tons of growing pains, lots of Red Scare nonsense to sort through, but every party meeting I attend I see new faces. People are increasingly finding their own interests aligning with the global south. There is a quantitative buildup for qualitative shifts, and this inflexion point is fast approaching.
As a western communist, my comrades and I have the very difficult task of trying to instill discpline and a sense of seriousness in organizing to a population that has largely been bribed out of revolutionary fervor for generations. However, hope is not lost, and no matter how difficult our task, it's increasingly getting more feasible.
We will win, comrade.
Soooo much this. Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will. Revolution is only possible if we believe that it is. Lenin believed it was possible but not in his lifetime. Lenin got one and only one thing wrong and that was it. We can never know when The Moment will come and all we can do right now is to try to grow these organizations but more importantly to discipline them. To employ or advocate for rigorous vetting standards (LOOKING AT YOU NYC DSA although your rejection of propaganda about china is cool and good) would be a good start. Of course it seems that on some level the DSA is highly compromised but from what I have heard from folks basically every party is compromised in the US. We have been simmering in the sauce for so long it's like the first Matrix movie how just random ass street food vendors suddenly turn into super powered agents of the state.
They hardly fuckin need COINTELPRO when mother fuckers like the person in that DSA leak just do it for them.
Yep, well said! It's hard. not easy nor impossible.
I actually had a conversation with a coworker yesterday. He used to be a pastor and grew up in a super evangelical family. Now he has a podcast that is borderline liberation theology and an interrogation of right wing christianity. We got to talking and we were on our work phones but conversation basically led from MLK to Lenin because it is real easy when talking about current events to bring up the riot is the language of the unheard line and then from there get to Lenin and the opening passage of state and revolution about the coopting of revolutionary figures while sanitizing them.
Excellent way to bring up Lenin! Lenin's observations are invaluable and can help us analyze our present conditions. It's important to carry on his legacy and re-analyze our existing world, just like Lenin did with Marx and re-analyzed for his era, the era after imperialism had solidified but before there was a single international dictatorship of the bourgeoisie helmed by one country, the US Empire.
DSA isn't compromised. It's just that as a "big tent" org with no vetting standards wrecker shit is going to happen.
We should want a space for angry libs to go and learn what the left is truly about. What we shouldn't do is allow them into spaces where they can do dumb shit without some form of vetting. But I will stand by the DSA being open to help people grow into comrades as a necessary part of the movement. It just needs to fill this role better.
That is literally what I meant by compromised.
The best argument you can make for the DSA not being compromised is that "compromised" implies having some baseline level of legitimacy that the DSA broadly lacks.
Oh I got a cowbee response I'm honored. Always like reading your posts/comments I always come away thinking how well thought out and well read they are. (As a longtime lemmygrad/hexbear/.ml lurker only recent poster)
I largely agree that the western left appears to be shifting as material conditions for the labor aristocracy worsen and the fangs of imperialism turn inwards.
At the same time I'm sure you can understand that at this moment in history calls from the western left for solidarity from the global south are slightly ridiculous and clearly from a place of privilege.
You flatter me too much, comrade. I'm a humble student of the generations of revolutionaries that precede us, trying to deepen my understanding through dialogue, and figure out better ways of persuading people to our shared cause.
I do agree, calls for solidarity from the global south as the Empire itself is finally truly feeling its own fangs (at least, the white population is finally beginning to feel it, people of color, queer folk, disabled folk, etc have felt it since the outset of this genocidal settler-colony-turned-empire began) is a bit absurd. Insulting, even. My hope was more to turn it into a point about revolutionary optimism, in that hopefully soon there won't be a US Empire to speak of outside of history books.
The water droplets may not bore through the stone today, tomorrow, or even in the next decade, but we will win, and that victory is closer than I think many of us realize if this pace of radical change continues.
Thanks for your thoughts!
Same! Cowbee is like the ML Mr. Miyagi out here. Always so implacably calm and collected with a seemingly supernatural level of patience and generosity when it comes to dealing with all the libs on lemmy.
His comments were very helpful for me translating my political thoughts to English.
Socdem millennials are going to be the new conservative boomers before you know it.
Can't wait for Gen Alpha to flips Gen Z's numbers tho
It is very hard to organise. People will discuss Marx or Lenin and then 5 seconds later they're frothing at the mouth saying things that sound like they came out of the mouth of the most diehard anti-communist. And then they have the gall to accuse you of having fallen for "propaganda."
What I think leads to the exact scenario you describe is a widespread, persistent and self-defeating tendency among many western leftists (白左), the failure to fully deprogram themselves from the liberal frameworks they ostensibly reject. While they may adopt the language of anti-imperialism, Marxism, or decolonization, their analysis remains tethered to idealist assumptions inherited from bourgeois liberalism: an overemphasis on individual identity over material conditions, a moralistic rather than dialectical understanding of power, and a faith in discourse, representation, or symbolic gestures as sufficient engines of change. This results in a house of cards, an ostensibly radical posture built not on historical materialism or class struggle, but on the shifting sands of liberal morality. Consequently, their “anti-imperialism” often collapses into performative outrage or selective solidarity, unable to grapple with the concrete contradictions of global capitalism, state power, or revolutionary praxis. True internationalism demands more than repackaged liberal guilt; it requires breaking cleanly with the epistemological foundations of liberalism and grounding one’s politics in the real movements of oppressed peoples, not in abstract ideals filtered through a Western gaze.
The western left would be so much better if they read Mao.
Unfortunately Mao was an authoritarian tankie and reading his work will infect you with the tankie mind virus.
Some of the real leftists need to set up an org to do a war time style propoganda leaflet dropping but its just annotated copies of the 红宝书 being dropped from drones across major cities and rural communities.
Hell yeah. Love to see leftist gatekeeping.
I’m going to assume you’re American or European; please correct me if I’m wrong. The lack of ideological and practical gatekeeping is a large part of why you have no successful movements. You just allow wreckers, 白左, and radlibs to identify themselves with your organizations, diluting your purpose and misdirecting your energy.
Every successful revolutionary movement, from Lenin’s Bolsheviks to the Vietnamese revolutionaries, had to rigorously distinguish between genuine comrades and opportunists. Gatekeeping is about preserving the unity of purpose necessary to advance the material interests of the proletariat. Without it, the contradictions within the movement overshadow the struggle against the real enemy.
The contradiction between global-souths aims(anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist, materially grounded) and the reformist or liberal tendencies of the western left is fundamental. Solidarity cannot exist where the goals are diametrically opposed. Understanding who is genuinely on the side of the people is a prerequisite for any meaningful cooperation.
The very first bit, "You shouldn't." still is not a great or practical message compared to "people need to be individually vetted" or something like that.
Well, that’s because these are two separate but connected points. From the perspective of the global south, the idea of solidarity with the western left in the abstract(or with western leftist organizations in general) doesn’t really make sense until they start taking themselves seriously, e.g., practicing proper gatekeeping. My wording was slightly hyperbolic, but the general point still stands. Obviously, occasional cooperation is possible when goals align, but that is different from genuine solidarity.
My point is that, since the question is phrased in terms of individuals ("western leftists," rather than "western leftist organizations"), the correct answer is that it depends on the person because there are clearly many real leftists out there, even if overall the organizations are bad. I think hyperbole here is unhelpful, especially on this topic, because it undermines being able to usefully analyze our circumstances in a way that gives us actionable information (i.e. it's effectively anti-organization because it is such a blanket condemnation of people here).
I understand your point, and I agree that solidarity at the individual level depends on the person, there are certainly genuine leftists in the West. My comment was deliberately hyperbolic to emphasize the structural problem: as long as the broader organizations/movement fail to take themselves seriously and allow opportunists to dominate, abstract solidarity with individuals is largely ineffective and irrelevant. The hyperbole isn’t meant to condemn every individual, but to highlight the material reality that weak structures undermine revolutionary goals and the movement as a whole. Occasional cooperation is possible when interests align, but that is materially different from sustained, principled solidarity.
How is it gatekeeping when all the Marxist literature is right there, out in the open, for everyone to read and learn about the contradiction of the system and how to combat them? The western left is gatekeeping itself from dialectical materialism.
Mao Zedong introduced the idea that has been tested and proven, "Unity - Critcism - Unity" for people's democratic organization. The western left seems to have skipped the first part and thus can not reach the third part either.
The literature is hard to read especially for a population that can't and doesn't want to read.
It's easy to mock Americans for this but much harder to actually address this problem.
It's also much harder in the modern age to convince someone to sit down and read a book with endless distractions competing for your attention. We're not just competing with capitalist propaganda, we're competing with every other book, movie, video game, and the dopamine machines known as social media! How TF do you expect the masses to sit down and Crack open Marx when Love Island is on?
We don't need everyone to read Marx, but we should expect our primary organizers to. Not everyone needs to be an expert on the intricacies of Marxist theory, but the revolutionary party must be to more effectively wage revolution. The masses just need to take to action and support the party, and the party needs to stay linked with the masses and earn its trust.
Comrade Lady Izdihar made a great diagram:
This explains Lenin's revolutionary theory quite well.
I like the graph and your points. I simply don't see DSA, even as the ML elements are pushing it left, becoming a Vanguard party or leading a revolution. Trying to materialize that from DSA is just going to lead to disappointment.
I think a org like PSL that has rigorous vetting in place should be a Vanguard org.
That doesn't mean DSA has no role. I think where DSA is the best fit is as a gateway or on ramp for baby leftists to learn how to organize, how to become leaders, and how to shake off the Democratic party brainstorms they have been hammered with over decades. If DSA can completely break from the Dems and be that entry-point to Socialism then they can become an incubator for new revolutionary forces that a more advanced/focused org like PSL can lead. In a perfect world PSL and DSA would work more closely together and DSA folks would stop trying to make DSA something it can't be. I'm trying in my little corner of burger land but 🤷♀️
I'm not really arguing for the DSA, I'm more in favor of the PSL. My point was more about organizing in general. I think you're getting threads mixed-up, the DSA was brought up in another thread. I mostly agree with you here.
i agree with this. as much as i'm sure there are good comrades in caucuses like Red Star, i'm pretty unconvinced by their overall project.
that's the idea/goal, yeah! but a Vanguard Party can't just declare itself as such, it needs to be embedded in working class struggle to the point it earns the trust of the masses and they look to it for guidance and leadership and want to fight alongside it. that's a long, difficult project but PSL is trying to build toward that horizon.
you cooked with this analysis, comrade! i would rather radlibs/baby leftists have a big net they can get caught in to do some kind of struggle rather than nothing, and which at its best will train them as organizers and expand their consciousness. it seems to me the biggest internal contradiction (or one of) re: DSA is how compatible this goal is with Democratic Party entryism. every now and again that tactic gets Ws for the movement in the form of electing a Mamdani-esque figure (who for all his limitations is still a net win), using a base of activists who tbh probably aren't in that moment ready for struggle beyond a campaign like his. but then you have such a large swath of the org who see that as an end rather than a situational means to an end, and it seems like that absorbs energy that could be put toward more meaningful organizing.
DSA ain't the Vanguard. Will never be.