I just assume that DemSocs are cowardly SocDems. It’s a lot quicker haha

Ok, so, what I’m understanding of your position is that Trotskyism is inherently racist and uses “critique” to detail conversation? Is this a correct assesment? Or are you saying that the ideas and modes of thought are being used to forward racism?

I’m also interested in your comment about how critiquing the CPC (not sure of the acronym, I’m assuming the Chinese communist party?) is inherently racist. I understand that, especially now given China’s rise on the global economy, that sinophobia is for sure on the rise but I don’t see why we can’t say “the CPC has its faults and those exist for x,y,z reason and therefore we should try and mitigate those in our own context”. I think that if we don’t take the stance of critical support, you run into issues with dogmatism.

If I’ve misunderstood or misrepresented what you’ve said, I’m happy to be wrong.

I’m curious, then, as to what kind of critique you’re referring to when you call it “cancer” because I grew up basically surrounded by trotskyist librarian types who have been in and around labour struggles their whole adult lives and I’ve never heard any critique that didn’t have at least 3 citations from history and philosophy. Do I always agree with their interpretation? No, but that doesn’t diminish the value of said critique.

Being critical and supportive is not a bad thing. If there is no critique you can’t improve. Be selective about the critiques you value of course, but to just say that any critique is “Trotskyist cancer” is absurd and dangerous.

Rosa Talks about it in Reform or Revolution in a way I always quote at social democrats because it’s both funny and true:

Fourier’s scheme of changing, by means of a system of phalansteries, the water of all the seas into tasty lemonade was surely a fantastic idea. But Bernstein, proposing to change the sea of capitalist bitterness into a sea of socialist sweetness, by progressively pouring into it bottles of social reformist lemonade, presents an idea that is merely more insipid but no less fantastic.

It’s still true a century later and SocDems (I include DemSocs in this category too) are no more radical.

Reform or Revolution, Rosa Luxemburg A really good introductory text and one I recommend to anyone just getting into left wing thought.

I think it’s hard to combat a century of red scare and we, as communists of various stripes, have to be able to deal with it. You can’t do coalition building or agitprop without this knowledge. If you want to try and bring people in, you have to accept their biases and try and work with them in a lot of ways while educating them in order to either mitigate them entirely or minimise them. We want people who are empowered to do work in their communities and organise in their workplaces and you do that with education and understanding.