m just going to keep saying it, because it keeps being...¶

I'm just going to keep saying it, because it keeps being true: this is what "class consciousness" means for the labor aristocracy. When your conception of "Marxism" ignores everything but vulgarized "prole vs bourg" it has no way to contend with national chauvinism. https://t.co/zuului93Kd Exhort "the workers" of the need for "international proletarian revolution" all you want; at the end of the day, the imperial bourgeoisie can always offer them more through the spoils of empire, and without the tremendous risk involved in entertaining thoughts of revolution. The national project is not a "distraction," it is an eagerly accepted bargain. It's the classic union busting strategy of selective incentives: targeting specific workers for promotion to remove them from the collective struggle and undermine the movement. The recipients of this bargain aren't being "distracted" by this maneuver: they are receiving real material benefits. In some cases, they may even be getting more than they would have from a successful unionization effort -- and with none of the risk and strife. Ignoring this means attempting to overcome the placating force of an entire section of the proletariat being promoted to cushy global management positions by appealing to an abstract indignation at being denied even more material benefits. You are trying to engender a sense of entitlement that the national project already taught them. Of course they want more. But what you promise as a communist is less than what the empire already promised them -- and the empire also promises and gives protection from chaos. Essentially, you are trying to tell them you can offer more than this -- that the empire is UNDER-delivering on an otherwise just promise. And you are imagining they will risk their lives to get it, fighting the very people who told them to want it.

https://t.co/fXYXgftaOB You are selling an ideal to replace the real. That's why this strategy has failed for over a century. If you want these people on board, you have to start by building an alternative that they can see, right in front of them. Start with the people excluded from the bargain. Undermine the empire by organizing the colonial base. Make it too expensive to keep all the middle managers on the payroll. Poach the ones who recognize the need for collective struggle, and wage war on those whose only preoccupation is seizing back their imperial privileges.