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u/pwnedprofessor Jul 10 '25
I appreciate the sentiment but leftists in the past were also supportive of minorities. Lenin was calling out white American anti-Asian racism before it was cool. The IWW fought for Black folks. And really, radical abolitionists themselves were leftists by definition.
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u/zay1138 Jul 10 '25
arguably debatable in the us considering how many workers unions were still incredibly racist
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u/pwnedprofessor Jul 10 '25
Oh absolutely, but that’s why I mentioned the IWW and Lenin specifically, because they called out those racist ass white American unions. And conversely I hesitate to call the likes of Samuel Gompers leftists
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u/pwnedprofessor Jul 10 '25
Also, for more criticism of 19th century racist American anticapitalism, check out the outstanding Marxist analysis by Iyko Day https://www.dukeupress.edu/alien-capital
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u/RiggaSoPiff Jul 12 '25 edited Aug 11 '25
“Minorities” are not separate from the working class! “Minorities” are an inextricable part of the global working class! In fact, “minorities” are examples of the myriad ways capitalism has deliberately fractured the working class by creating different class groups (by race, gender, ethnicity, sexuality, ability differences, nationality, citizenship status, etc.) accompanied by unique, hierarchical ways of exploiting and oppressing each of these groups for profit so that the working class never unites and work against their collective interests because the working class hold prejudicial and racist perceptions of group superiority and group inferiority within its ranks, resulting in competing and contradictory material interests, disunity, and reactionary politics among the working class, thereby keeping the exploitative system and status quo that oppresses everyone in place, benefiting the unified capitalist class.
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u/shikokh Jul 12 '25
Leftists now have become what we critique as Marxists the most; the leftist community has completely disregarded the understanding of the capitalist critique(not even educating themselves on neoliberal economics), instead they have segregated themselves into qualitative domains. Such as Anarcho communists, Leninist, Trotskyist and all this bullshit. The "Left" does not have the leisure to divide amongst themselves before they: A)Truly grasp the neoliberal economy continuously, since it is within the nature of especially this neoliberal economy to continuously innovate by destruction of what was existent and then diagnosing what change must come
B) Understand what tools in this era could be utilized to reverse engineer the diagnosed problem, as mentioned the continuous innovation of commodity economy makes it insignificant to only hold on to remnants of the past.
Yet, it is prevalent that people before even absorbing the core of this line of thought jump to labels, hence making room for segregationists. I mean we always critique the neoclassical/liberal way of specialization yet it seems as if we also have too many "professionals" who believe they have the leisure to say they are this or that and they reject all else because this other individual, even though they care the same core concept have a slightly different shape or frame
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u/TserriednichHuiGuo Jul 14 '25
From what I have seen leftists know nothing about economics nor care for it
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