With the recent victory of Mamdani, I thought about sharing this video by Marxist-Leninist content creator Jones Manoel.
The whole video is in portuguese, but the automatic subtitles from youtube are pretty good here, with a few exceptions like getting a few names wrong and confusing “Hollywood” with “Dutch” for some reason.
Still, comrade Jones take seems pretty solid to me. He’s skeptical of Zohran’s actual power to enact any meaning change in NY, while also acknowledging the historical significance of his win as a Muslim and Palestine supporter, specially because it happened in the heart of the empire.
He also throws shade and criticism towards China and Vietnam in regards to the Palestinian genocide, which I think are well deserved, and since he is someone that constantly studies Brasil, and talks primarily to a Brasilian audience, he also talks about it in the context of the video.
What do y’all think about his take?
I have to ask, have you watched the video to see what exactly he has said about China and Vietnam? It is not like his criticism is any less scientific than your analysis. I get what you’re saying, but I fail to see how that can justify China’s position on the issue right now.
And sure, China could technically go directly to blockading the US since they are the source of the genocide, but that’s asking for direct confrontation from a country that does not do this kind of confrontation. Yet, doing something against Israel is a completely different story. This is not about going all in or not, and I don’t think anyone expects them to do that.
But here’s the thing. Like comrade Jones has said in the video, Palestine cannot wait for China to turn internationalist again. We are talking about a literal genocide here, that the whole world is watching and letting happen, and China is not a poor country anymore still figuring things out, they are the second largest economy on the planet and constantly rising by all metrics. The same way that you question this criticism of China from the perspective of what it might take to run such a state, we can question how can they let this genocide happen when they have the power to do more, specially when they know very well what is like to be on the receiving end of colonization. Your arguments are important and completely valid, but there’s a bigger issue at hand, the erasure and ethnic cleansing of a whole nation.
If we were talking about why don’t Cuba or the DPRK help Palestine, that would be a completely different issue and I would agree with you here, but it is China we are talking about.
I also think you are not factoring in what the US can actually do against China. They can’t tariff China, they can’t blockade China, they can’t wage open war against China, to do so would just be a colossal bullet to their own foot, they don’t have the industrialization needed to fuck around with China, and they are not gonna reindustrialize anytime soon. Not only that but the US is already heavily involved in two armed conflicts at the moment (Ukraine-Russia War, Palestine genocide) and aiming for a third one (Venezuela invasion), all while also facing internal turmoil and increased polarization with the Trump administration.
Brasil is still capitalist, so no, but I don’t get how that is relevant to the issue at hand. His work or criticism does not become lesser just because he’s not in a position of power or burdened by such difficult decisions. I don’t expect anyone that is not Brasilian to be knowledgeable on his work, nor do I need to run defense for him, but if I’m not misunderstanding your intention with this question, this doesn’t seem fair, as it would mean only those in such positions can do this type of criticism. Like I said, he has done and is still doing a lot of work as a Marxist in Brasil. For reference, you can even find him quoted in this very site’s tagline sometimes:
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I agree completely with that. I think the issue here is that the Palestine cause is also a failure that needs to be factored in, after all, we are internationalists.
I think this sentiment may be partly what is wrong with the analysis. Later it is mentioned the ways the US cannot defeat China but we have to consider capital’s penchant for war is not beholden to such rationalisations. Put it this way: one is asking China and its peoples to burden the risk of war and escalation of aggression because Brazilians (in this context) have not managed to out organise the US to stop the genocide.
People like Manoel have helped more people become marxist than most people, and has done obviously significant amount of real world organising, and some of his writings have helped me too significantly and ironically (from a liberal sense, dialectical from a marxist perspective) may have contributed to the criticisms presented here. I hold him to very high regard so I don’t say what I do lightly.
Yes, but the US has already tried some of the things I mentioned and ended up backpedaling once the consequences of such actions hit their economy and their dominant class. I’m not saying they won’t do it because of these rationalizations. What I’m saying is that if they do it, the scales are not in their favor, they will suffer the consequences heavily of their own actions. They are an empire in decline.
What? We don’t have the power to do so. I wish we could just pressure our government to do something, but that’s materially impossible. We are a neoliberal country with a well spoken president, a vastly unprepared and unequipped heavily reactionary military and a heavily far right congress, all while having the Zionist Bolsonarismo ideology still being well alive in the population even if Bolsonaro himself has fell out of grace.
Yes, we are still extremely small as Marxists in Brasil. Yes we could be doing much better, but you can’t possible compare us and our situation to the US or China.
Even if we managed to do just what you’re saying. The moment us, a country with no nuclear weapons and a heavily unprepared army start doing anything against Israel on the ground, the US will immediately bomb our door to shreds. This is in no way comparable at all with what China can do and is actively failing to do.
Besides, you can use this argument for every single country on earth right now.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying we are also not responsible for letting the genocide happen. Like I said, no one is doing anything, everyone is complicit. We have been pressuring our government to stop trade with Israel, unfortunately with no success, even when Israel kidnaps Brasilians like it happened in the flotilla.
Yes, exactly. Why isn’t every marxist that blames China, for doing not enough against the genocide, managed not to organise sufficiently in their own country to stop the genocide themselves? It is why I brought up the Cuba as an example; against liberals it is easy to explain underdevelopment as a product of a siege against socialism but for marxist-leninists the point is to succeed despite that - the genocidal nature of capital is a given so how do we beat that?
Philosophers have interpreted the world, the point is to change it
I think we are talking past each other at this point.
The failure of Marxist movements elsewhere is not an excuse for China’s lack of action on Palestine. You can use my example of the conditions of why Brasil can’t meaningfully enact change on Palestine to other countries around the world and it would fit just as well because basically no country other than China right now have the material conditions to enact such change.
So, in this specific case, it doesn’t matter that we are failing, because even if we were not, and let’s say Brasil turns socialist tomorrow, it would still not be able to help Palestine in any meaningful way, because to reach such a stage it would take much more time than Palestine have left. Yet, China is at such stage right now.
So that idealism is the mistake.
If, for example, it is posited that certain deemed actions by China would consitute more than symbolism if China were to act upon them, then it is the duty of said non-chinese self-claimed marxist-leninists who believe in those paradigms then to organise so China can act. So go on then, do so.
If one isn’t going to do that, and instead throw their hands up in the air then one is admitting there is no praxis here:
Like I said in that second link there’s only a few groups of people in the whole world that could potentially hold the geopolitical high ground against China and each one of them come with caveats.
No matter how exasperating the situation we musn’t fall into liberal paradigms and have a dialectical approach. No matter how big the enemy feel it must be understood that capital contains its own seeds of destruction because it by definition has dependancies on those who resist it; it is this weakness that must be exploited, rather than resorting to supposed idealisms (powerful socialist country over there is not doing something that one thinks is important but for which as an ML one chooses nothing effectively to do aboutit) for which one chooses not to organise against because it is not in your material interests (yeah think what an anti-China rally by supposed communists saying that the PRC are not doing enough against the genocide will be effectively supporting in a global western hegemony for which the Global South is only collectively recently slowly turning against, only then because of their own capital interests). MLs should not have the luxury to hold on to idealisms devoid of dialectical praxis.
Socialism is not utopian; one must consider what the strategic concessions are needed to survive. I am reminded by Western Marxists who are aghast that McDonalds exists in China but that is what socialism looks like in that place in this timeline (there’s a lot to unpack in that last sentence for some).