The western left has a big fetish for failure too, tbf. I think it’s a Christian ethic of suffering as a sign of moral purity that permeates so much of western culture. And it produces this aversion to actually grappling with the vicissitudes and complexities of governance.
Rather than be forced to make compromises in the face of material reality, or god forbid, actually make a mistake, it’s easier to valorize nobile failures, wax utopian about how you would fix everything if you were in power, and balk at anyone actually trying to wield it.
I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately. Like i see so many people debate for example the USSR. When they do it they almost exclusively talk about morals, and was this or that wrong or right. Which to me is so self defeating. You need to have the pragmatist strategy of Machiavelli, or Sun Tzu, and the Compassionate detachment of Buddha at the same time. You can’t just hope good things happen and expect them to, and you can’t just be purely strategic and not care about outcomes. It has to be a synthesis. Yet the ability to realize that synthesis seems very lacking in western discourse.
Like what is better a commune that perfectly fits your morals but lasts 6 months because it gets slaughtered by some brownshirts immediately, or a nation that fits 80% of your moral desires, and lasts a century because it ruthlessly defends itself from the forces of reactionary capital? One of those things can give an entire generation a fulfilling life, and one of them is a vacation that ends in disaster.
Another example of this is the contrast in how the People’s Republic of Korea is treated compared to Palestine. Both nations engaged in the same struggle — the anti-colonial fight for national independence. In the case of Korea, the struggle was made from a socialist perspective. Korea succeeded, despite being a country that is fractured by imperialism. It has an economy that is relatively strong, with a reasonably high level of industrialization, a very strong national army and capacity to launch nuclear weapons. So, Korea is not a defenseless nation. Palestinians are a people who are deeply oppressed, in a situation of extreme poverty, that don’t have a national economy because they don’t have a national state. They don’t have an army or military or economic power. Therefore, Palestine is the total incarnation of the metaphor of David vs. Goliath, except that this David doesn’t have a chance of beating Goliath in political and military conflict. Therefore, almost everyone in the international left likes Palestine. People become ecstatic looking at those images — which I don’t think are very fantastic — of a child or teenager using a sling to launch a rock at a tank. Look, this is a clear example of heroism but it is also a symbol of barbarism. This is a people who do not have the capacity to defend themselves facing an imperialist colonial power that is armed to the teeth. They do not have an equal capacity of resistance, but this is romanticized. Western leftists like this situation of oppression, suffering and martyrdom.
I’m so glad to see my thoughts wrt perspectives on the DPRK and Palestine being represented in the page. You can’t support one and not the other.
The western left has a big fetish for failure too, tbf. I think it’s a Christian ethic of suffering as a sign of moral purity that permeates so much of western culture. And it produces this aversion to actually grappling with the vicissitudes and complexities of governance.
Rather than be forced to make compromises in the face of material reality, or god forbid, actually make a mistake, it’s easier to valorize nobile failures, wax utopian about how you would fix everything if you were in power, and balk at anyone actually trying to wield it.
I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot lately. Like i see so many people debate for example the USSR. When they do it they almost exclusively talk about morals, and was this or that wrong or right. Which to me is so self defeating. You need to have the pragmatist strategy of Machiavelli, or Sun Tzu, and the Compassionate detachment of Buddha at the same time. You can’t just hope good things happen and expect them to, and you can’t just be purely strategic and not care about outcomes. It has to be a synthesis. Yet the ability to realize that synthesis seems very lacking in western discourse.
Like what is better a commune that perfectly fits your morals but lasts 6 months because it gets slaughtered by some brownshirts immediately, or a nation that fits 80% of your moral desires, and lasts a century because it ruthlessly defends itself from the forces of reactionary capital? One of those things can give an entire generation a fulfilling life, and one of them is a vacation that ends in disaster.
Western Marxism, the Fetish for Defeat, and Christian Culture by Jones Manoel
I’m so glad to see my thoughts wrt perspectives on the DPRK and Palestine being represented in the page. You can’t support one and not the other.