Sectarianism and Understanding: Part 1

I apologize in advance. This is one of the most badly edited things I have ever posted on the internet. I'm not even sure if I agree with it anymore.

Part 2 (I already have the entire thing written, but it's too big for one post) will be on my community. (yes i am shilling for my community here). Warning about that second part: It may veer into some vaguely "left unity" territory, so if you disagree with that but like this first part... you have been warned. Don't worry, I'm not necessarily going to say anarchists are right or anything like that i don't think they are

The approach that the United States, radical left has adapted is fundamentally flawed, as demonstrated by it’s almost complete lack of political power. Numerous explanations have been made for this, many of them rooting in the relative comfort of most United States citizens.

I do think this argument makes some sense, but that it doesn’t hold that much weight when inspected closer. If this were the main roadblock that socialism has encountered in the United States, I speculate that we would have a much higher portion of the less well-off (non-labor-aristocratic) proletariat participating in radically socialist politics. Instead, we see a resurgence of reactionary views, political apathy, and nihilism. While there could be other possible explanations for this, I think the most likely one is that socialist theory has not truly yet been adapted to existence in the imperial core. Indeed, the majority of successful figures and scientific Marxists figures have been in imperialized, and, sometimes, feudal countries.

These are quite noticeably, not in even remotely the same situation as the proletariat in the United States. Exact differences are numerous, but what should be first and foremost acknowledged is that it is fundamentally different. But, of course, this has been acknowledged by quite a few people, many of which are reactionaries pretending to be “socialist”. The laughable “pat-Soc”, or “patriotic socialist”, claims to be adapting a scientific Marxism for the United States, but if they are, they must not have been examining scientific Marxism too closely!

Indeed, the main flaw many of these aspiring revolutionaries share is a complete and total disregard for the findings of previous revolutionaries, a belief that they are irrelevant. But this is non-sensical. Of course they are relevant. If their analysis of the material environment in their imperialized countries was correct (and it most certainly was- A socialist revolution was successfully done to overthrow Tsarist Russia for a reason), then the insights gleamed there are still going to be valuable - Just with the caveat that they were observed from the perspective of an imperialized country, not the one doing the imperializing.

So what can we gleam from this? Well, the mistakes that the Western and especially the United States, socialists have made, is twofold. Not only have some socialists made the grave error of failing to acknowledge the importance of previous revolutionaries, but other socialists have interpreted their writings and experiences as being able to be directly translated to their current situation. An equally massive mistake.

We can take Lenin’s critiques, the internationalist approach to proletarian struggle, Mao’s examples of successful revolutions and conflicts, but we cannot use these people as one to one maps on what to do now. There is still theorizing to be done, desperate work to understand the United States proletariat, and it cannot be simplified to something as trivial and fatalistic (a tendency Lenin himself criticized!) as organization in the imperial core being impossible.

But how to reach the United States proletariat? If they can be reached, then what are we missing? They are not being organized now, and that is not due to lack of trying.

I suggest that most (modern, 2020) United States socialists have completely failed to understand the situation of both themselves and their peers on a fundamental level, in understanding the material conditions of the United States proletariat.