marxism

Idk I get what the author is trying to say, but like, trying to pin these tendencies on this or that "tradition" just feeds into the sectarian impulse and buys time for any negative forces situated around these dynamics. Calling out third campism and sectarianism, and some of the silliness around Rockhill's arguments is fine and good, and yeah, sectarian tendencies desvended from Marcyism have problems. But that's for the Marcysists to work out. PSL is in crisis, which has generated some like renewed interest in Marcyism. Frankly if you're involved in any leftist partyist project, you're probably in crisis, and if not, recovering from one or heading toward one.

By all means, call out third campism and sectarianism, criticize it into absolute obscurity. But the task is not to become third campist and sectarian in the process. It is to engage more deeply and meaningfully in struggle, and from that engagement, develop the party. These tendencies are worthy of critique, as is every single thing. But these tendencies are not the problem, we are just now beginning to understand the problem and if you ask me, placing the blame on another tendency while failing to develop a practical alternative is the real problem.

Personally, I believe we have reached a structural tipping point in the nature of the struggle against capitalism for a working class party that is forcing these tendencies to critically develop and unalterably change. PSL, SAlt, maybe even CPUSA, and virtually very other left tendency were long stable and traditionally sound, now are racked by splits and revision of long held political limes. DSA, itself once a very particular and stable org has grown rapidly in recent years, driving the development of internal caucuses and tendencies, which frankly are practically all in crisis as well. The forces that developed the basis for DSA to become a mass party are dissolving into the mass. Meanwhile, the middle class nature of DSA is pushing the org back toward reformism.

It is much less interesting to me what troublesome tendencies of this or that left sect, than it is to identify and disseminate actual conditions of the struggle, toward a resolution of the fundamental challenges facing the organization of the working class against capitalism and the class interests of the capitalists.

Who even is this?

On first skim it seems chock full of masturbatory potshots, I'm not sure it's worth hours of my time to try to drill down to the essence of its criticisms. Like every other sentence is a vague allusion to something supposedly wrong, as if every reader is supposed to already know what it is (or just take it at the author's word). But very little in the way of actual details or actionable correctives.

Footnote 5 is particularly weasely, mentioning sexual assault coverups by the PSL, but if you look down at the source it's just pointing to a link about a single FRSO chapter. Leftist orgs are not in any way immune to sex pests, but vague and broad accusations are wrecker shit.

It is an insult to Stalinists to call Marcyites Stalinist. Firstly, they are, so to speak, genetically Trotskyist...

I hope this is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, otherwise "genetics" is idealist nonsense.

The PSL/ANSWER protest steward will not be by your side when you get kettled, bludgeoned, and locked up by the cops. They weren’t there in 2020, and they won’t be there next time. The Central sees its own membership as a mass of exploitable pawns who won’t question it when they are lied to and exploited. Imagine what they think of everyone else.

This kind of claim absolutely needs a source. Just throwing it out there without one reeks of wrecking behavior. Not everyone was dialed into niche communist drama half a decade ago.

One wonders why Rockhill did not just write positively about the theoretical patrimony of these revolutionaries instead of awkwardly bashing ‘Western Marxism’ while carving out exceptions for faves like Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukács.

What the fuck are you even talking about. Rockhill's critique wasn't awkward nor bashing lmao. So this has got to be some Stanford philosophy nerd who's bitter that someone critiqued western academia, right? Kinda shit is parroted by half the people on /r/criticaltheory, none of whom have even read the book they're hating on

Losurdo upbraids ‘Western Marxists’ (a category so broad for him that it includes explicit anti-Marxists like Hannah Arendt)

Stupid as fuck potshot, Arendt was obviously part of the critical theory dialogue and participated in the creation of the compatible anticommunist left that Losurdo is (probably) talking about. I say "probably" because it's not worth the effort to pore over Losurdo's writing to see if he made a mild categorical error. And anyone who's read Losurdo's critiques knows what he's referring to, it's not a particularly fuzzy signifier.

Seems like 95% of this essay is just like that, vague associations and pejoratives without any explanation as to why those associations are valid, why the pejoratives apply, or how any of it should be corrected. Kinda shit western academics were doing when they spewed Freudian babble at MLs that supported the USSR back in the day.

Who do the Marcyist-Losurdoists really write for? Their texts generally assume that the reader is already familiar with the most renowned figures of ‘Western Marxism,’ liberalism, conservatism, and all the other traditions they criticize.

~~At least the author is self-aware~~

If you found something useful in this by all means please tell me what I missed, but my ADHD focus and free time are too finite to read this more than the two times it took to write this comment.

One of the more interesting exercises in the building and burning of a strawman I've read in recent times that still managed to stumble upon some sparse valid points.

Allah alone knows what he meant by this