Rosa Roja's Words

rosa roja • 4 days ago
What you should have -- and so easily could have -- written in this article is:

It requires a political struggle to unify all sections of the working class, of all races, in a common fight against unemployment, poverty, inequality, RACISM, IMPERIALISM, and the capitalist profit system.

But I guess you would have choked on those words. Instead you wrote: "it is clear that broader issues are involved—bound up NOT with racial divisions".... Oy gewalt.

Queue the mindless attacks from the usual suspects.... I don't intend to answer them any more.

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 rosa roja
Your polemic against me is made up of assertions that I strongly agree with embedded in a hash of falsehoods, half truths, smears, and misinterpretations that (as usual) attribute to me things I've never said and would never think to say (such as questioning the concept of objective truth or the revolutionary role of the working class). I can only conclude that you merely pretend to welcome debate, whereas what you really want is the empty approval of sycophants. Since you seem to have no interest in trying to read and understand what others write, I will bow out and leave you with some quotations from Lenin's article which I referred to. (Pay special attention to the word "alliance".)
BEGIN QUOTES.
Is there any connection between imperialism and the monstrous and disgusting victory opportunism (in the form of social-chauvinism) has gained over the labour movement in Europe? This is the fundamental question of modern socialism.
the exploitation of oppressed nations ... and especially the exploitation of colonies by a handful of "Great" Powers, increasingly
transforms the "civilised" world into a parasite on the body of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations.
Imperialism somewhat changes the situation. A privileged upper stratum of the proletariat in the imperialist countries lives partly at the expense of hundreds of millions in the uncivilised nations.
The capitalists CAN devote a part (and not a small one, at that!) of these superprofits to bribe THEIR OWN workers, to create something like an alliance (recall the celebrated "alliances" described by the Webbs of English trade unions and employers) between the workers of the given
nation and their capitalists ...

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rosa roja  miobe  12 days ago
Sorry, Miobe, but my point has NOT changed, and you did NOT address it.
Perhaps you did not understand it, and if so I apologize for implying that you made no effort to do so, maybe you did. Here it is again:
"the annihilation of indigenous peoples can not be understood as class-struggle in the traditional sense ... We therefore face two possibilities: EITHER to recognize "indigenous" as a new social class alongside,capitalist, proletarian, etc, AND/OR to admit that not all forms of oppression are class-based, but may instead be organized around geography or other factors."
Get it? Imperialist genocide is not class struggle IN THE TRADITIONAL SENSE, because who are the two struggling classes? This is exactly what I was getting at, I have modified nothing. So I ask you again: If the annihilation of indigenous peoples is an example of class struggle, then which two classes were struggling?
(This is clear as I can make it, but if it's still not clear to you, please say why and I'll try again. I'm always happy to try to clarify if someone is GENUINELY interested.)

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rosa roja  Infarction  12 days ago
"Some of the commentators appear to have a ready stash of material to cut
and paste whenever others question the rigid dogma of Marxism."
Exactly. And if Marxism is anything at all, it's the opposite of a rigid dogma. Rigidity in theory is the worst enemy of genuine understanding.

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rosa roja
Well, let's see. Here are four such sentences that I've extracted (as best I could given the poor audio) from Stein's acceptance speech at the GP convention.
1. We don't need no frigging wall, we just gotta stop invading other countries.
2. [Our party has long been] opposing war crimes committed by Saudi Arabia in Yemen and war crimes and occupation committed by the Israeli government in Palestine.
3. [Our foreign policy must abandon] military and economic domination
4. We will free the political prisoners ... Leonard Peltier ... Edward Snowden
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rosa roja  VJP • 3 days ago
Yes, & sexism. That would have been even better. I left it out of my suggested wording because I was trying to include only the absolute minimum that would have been needed to make this article credible in the context of police killings. "Racism" absolutely had to be there, and "imperialism" too, since I believe that it is the context in which racism must be understood and opposed.

Right on queue the mindless attackers have weighed in. God only knows what they would have written if I had included the word "sexism" too! This website (Of WSWS) at least accepts -- albeit grudgingly -- that racism/imperialism is real. I'm not sure one could say the same about gender discrimination....

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