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 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).