Perennial Jones Manoel article excerpt:

Western [leftism] is basically a kind of [leftism] which has, as a key characteristic, never exercised political power.

It is a [leftism] that has, more and more frequently, concerned itself with philosophical and aesthetic issues. It has pulled back, for example, from criticism of political economy and the problem of the conquest of political power.

More and more it has taken a historic distance from the concrete experiences of socialist transition in the Soviet Union, China, Viet Nam, Cuba and so forth. This western [leftism] considers itself to be superior to eastern Marxism because it hasn’t tarnished [leftism] by transforming it into an ideology of the State like, for example, Soviet Marxism, and it has never been authoritarian, totalitarian or violent.

This [leftism] preserves the purity of theory to the detriment of the fact that it has never produced a revolution anywhere on the face of the Earth – this is a very important point. Wherever a victorious socialist revolution has taken place in the West, like Cuba, it is much more closely associated with the so-called eastern Marxism than with this western [leftism] produced in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and parts of South America. This [leftism] is proud of its purity and this is the first elemental characteristic that derives from Christianity.

Gramsci shows that one of the main historical concerns of the Catholic Church has been to control the reading and the diffusion of Christianity, blocking the rise and spread of popular, autonomous and base level interpretations and thereby saving the purity of the historic doctrine. Therefore, the Catholic Church can say that Christianity is love, equality, loving thy neighbor, compassion and non-violence, despite the fact that it has been a fundamental weapon in the legitimization of slavery, the crusades and colonialism, and despite the coziness of various elements of the Catholic Church with Nazi-fascism and the military dictatorships.

There is a constant throughout the entire history of Christianity which is that these elements don’t corrupt the doctrine. They are either false expressions of Christianity, or they are facts, like potatoes in a sack, that have no theoretical, political or, most importantly, theological meaning. So, the fact that history denies the affirmation that Christianity is based on compassion and peace does not change or challenge the doctrine.

Many [leftists] act the same way. Their biggest worry is the purity of the doctrine. Every time that historical facts challenge the doctrine or show the complexity of the practical operationality of elements of the theory, they deny that these elements are part of the story of Marxist theory and doctrine. This is, for example, what doctrines of betrayal are built on.

Every movement that appears to stray a bit from these “pure” models that were created a priori is explained through the concept of betrayal, or is explained as “state capitalism.” Therefore, nothing is socialism and everything is state capitalism. Nothing is socialist transition and everything is state capitalism. The revolution is only a revolution during that glorious moment of taking political power. Starting from the moment of building a new social order, its over. Revolution is always a political process which has two moments: a moment of destruction of the old capitalist order and taking power, and a moment of building a new order. The contradictions, the problems, the failures, the mistakes, sometimes even the crimes, mainly happen during this moment of building the new order.

So when the time comes to evaluate the building of a new social order -- which is where, apparently, the practice always appears to stray from the purity of theory -- the specific appears corrupted in the face of the universal. It is at this point that the idea of betrayal is evoked, that the idea of counter revolution is evoked, and that the idea of State Capitalism appears in order to preserve the purity of theory.

Read the whole article, you libs.