I mean…yes. But there is no lack of effort to counter all these tendencies. Even moderates point out these problems within the org. Internal struggle is working, even prominent moderate electoralist caucuses are leading Marxist reading groups.
Theory heads like us have our own problems, we easily become sectarian, we often are not self critical enough of our own ideas, we subscribe to all sorts of idealism, usually via intellectualism, we use “Marxism” or “dialectical materialism” in a way that actually alienates us from the real struggle.
But yeah compared to like the Russian rsdlp, we are like at 1895, maybe? Probably not even that far since the ambient narodnikism in the country at least made revolutionaries really fucking serious. We are all just volunteers, but for a few exceptions.
I mean…yes. But there is no lack of effort to counter all these tendencies. Even moderates point out these problems within the org. Internal struggle is working, even prominent moderate electoralist caucuses are leading Marxist reading groups.
Theory heads like us have our own problems, we easily become sectarian, we often are not self critical enough of our own ideas, we subscribe to all sorts of idealism, usually via intellectualism, we use “Marxism” or “dialectical materialism” in a way that actually alienates us from the real struggle.
But yeah compared to like the Russian rsdlp, we are like at 1895, maybe? Probably not even that far since the ambient narodnikism in the country at least made revolutionaries really fucking serious. We are all just volunteers, but for a few exceptions.
I read this article by J Cannon this week, has a lot of really prescient points. https://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1925/sitdiff.htm
We advanced beyond this by 1935, but 10 or so years later we regressed basically all the way back, and now, even further behind.