A few of the things I find frustrating about so-called "campism" or "Third Worldism" as espoused by US/UK Marxist-Leninist(-Maoist) micro-parties:

1) The Third World/Non-Aligned movement(s) was explicitly NOT about defending Stalinism. It was about creating an alternative to US *and* USSR imperialism. Leaders like Mosaddegh (Iran), Castro (Cuba), Nkrumah (Ghana) were not Stalinist drones; they had complex relationships with the Soviets and the West (and China, for that matter). Furthermore, each had *different* relationships with these superpowers and those relationships evolved over time. Take a gander at the *dizzyingly* nuanced analysis of major global issues in this speech by Castro on the Havana Declaration: http://www.fidelcastro.cu/en/discursos/speech-delivered-34th-session-united-nations-general-assembly-new-york-city

Sample quotes:

"We are 95 countries, from every continent, and we represent the immense majority of humankind. We are united by the determination to defend collaboration among our countries, free national and social development, sovereignty, security, equality and free determination. We are associated in the endeavor to change the current system of international relations which are based on injustice, inequality and oppression. We act in international politics as an independent global factor."

"We the Non-Aligned Movement countries insist that it is necessary to eliminate the abysmal inequality that separates the developed countries from the developing countries. We are fighting for that in order to abolish the poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy that still plague hundreds of millions of human beings. We strive for a new world order, based on justice, equity and peace, that replaces the unjust and unequal system reigning today, in which, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Havana, “wealth continues to be concentrated in the hands of a few powers whose economies, founded on pillaging, are maintained thanks to the exploitation of the workers and the transfer and pillage of natural and other resources of the peoples of Africa, Latin America, Asia and other regions throughout the world”."

"The most reputed economists, both in the West and those subscribing to Marxist concepts, admit that the form in which the international debt system of developing countries functions is completely irrational and that maintaining it threatens to bring on a sudden interruption which would endanger the entire precarious and unstable world economic balance."

2) Opposition to US imperialism doesn't make a leader necessarily good, and it certainly doesn't make them perfect. See for instance: Shining Path, Khmer Rouge, North Korea.

3) It is insulting to the rich intellectual and political histories of Third World/Global South countries to either demonize them or put them on a pedestal. Actual respect for their ideas and histories requires us to learn about them and critically engage them instead of declaring some leader, party, or group a spokesperson for billions of diverse people. As Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, reminds us: there are always differences *within* marginalized groups as well as between them. As feminists, ethnic minorities, and anarchists in the Global South have long reminded us, Third World nationalism is at best *complex* and not straightforwardly laudatory.

Some good books to read on these themes: Uma Narayan's Dislocating Cultures, Adom Getachew's Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination, Benedict Anderson's Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, Robin D. G. Kelley's Freedom Dreams, Saba Mahmood's The Politics of Piety. This doesn't even scratch the surface.

4) They're not even fucking Leninists and they certainly don't follow Castro either. Louis Proyect (himself a Leninist/Trotskyist) makes a damning case in this regard:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/organization/lenin_in_context.htm

5) Deifying Third World leaders makes it harder to critically assess their accomplishments and shortcomings. For instance, how often do you hear anyone except liberals talking about how abortion is still illegal in Bolivia? Or about Nkrumahism and misogyny? Or about the trajectory of Indian nationalism, which evolved from promising but problematic into genocidal ethnonationalist authoritarian Hindutva?

6) Having to wade through all the Western ML(M) bullshit makes it harder to form actual relationships of solidarity with comrades in the Global South.

#Anarchism #GlobalSouth #tankies #campism #microsect

A few of the things I find frustrating about so-called "campism" or "Third Worldism" as espoused by US/UK Marxist-Leninist(-Maoist) micro-parties:

1) The Third World/Non-Aligned movement(s) was explicitly NOT about defending Stalinism. It was about creating an alternative to US *and* USSR imperialism. Leaders like Mossadeq (Iran), Castro (Cuba), Nkrumah (Ghana) were not Stalinist drones; they had complex relationships with the Soviets and the West (and China, for that matter). Furthermore, each had *different* relationships with these superpowers and those relationships evolved over time. Take a gander at the *dizzyingly* nuanced analysis of major global issues in this speech by Castro on the Havana Declaration: http://www.fidelcastro.cu/en/discursos/speech-delivered-34th-session-united-nations-general-assembly-new-york-city

Sample quotes:

"We are 95 countries, from every continent, and we represent the immense majority of humankind. We are united by the determination to defend collaboration among our countries, free national and social development, sovereignty, security, equality and free determination. We are associated in the endeavor to change the current system of international relations which are based on injustice, inequality and oppression. We act in international politics as an independent global factor."

"We the Non-Aligned Movement countries insist that it is necessary to eliminate the abysmal inequality that separates the developed countries from the developing countries. We are fighting for that in order to abolish the poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy that still plague hundreds of millions of human beings. We strive for a new world order, based on justice, equity and peace, that replaces the unjust and unequal system reigning today, in which, as proclaimed in the Declaration of Havana, “wealth continues to be concentrated in the hands of a few powers whose economies, founded on pillaging, are maintained thanks to the exploitation of the workers and the transfer and pillage of natural and other resources of the peoples of Africa, Latin America, Asia and other regions throughout the world”."

"The most reputed economists, both in the West and those subscribing to Marxist concepts, admit that the form in which the international debt system of developing countries functions is completely irrational and that maintaining it threatens to bring on a sudden interruption which would endanger the entire precarious and unstable world economic balance."

2) Opposition to US imperialism doesn't make a leader necessarily good, and it certainly doesn't make them perfect. See for instance: Shining Path, Khmer Rouge, North Korea.

3) It is insulting to the rich intellectual and political histories of Third World/Global South countries to either demonize them or put them on a pedestal. Actual respect for their ideas and histories requires us to learn about them and critically engage them instead of declaring some leader, party, or group a spokesperson for billions of diverse people. As Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, reminds us: there are always differences *within* marginalized groups as well as between them. As feminists, ethnic minorities, and anarchists in the Global South have long reminded us, Third World nationalism is at best *complex* and not straightforwardly laudatory.

Some good books to read on these themes: Uma Narayan's Dislocating Cultures, Adom Getachew's Worldmaking After Empire: The Rise and Fall of Self-Determination, Benedict Anderson's Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination, Robin D. G. Kelley's Freedom Dreams, Saba Mahmood's The Politics of Piety. This doesn't even scratch the surface.

4) They're not even fucking Leninists and they certainly don't follow Castro either. Louis Proyect (himself a Leninist/Trotskyist) makes a damning case in this regard:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/organization/lenin_in_context.htm

5) Deifying Third World leaders makes it harder to critically assess their accomplishments and shortcomings. For instance, how often do you hear anyone except liberals talking about how abortion is still illegal in Bolivia? Or about Nkrumahism and misogyny? Or about the trajectory of Indian nationalism, which evolved from promising but problematic into genocidal ethnonationalist authoritarian Hindutva?

6) Having to wade through all the Western ML(M) bullshit makes it harder to form actual relationships of solidarity with comrades in the Global South.

#Anarchism #GlobalSouth #tankies #campism #microsect