Even if a communist can colloquially describe themselves as being on the left, there’s a distinction between communism and “the left.” This is implied right in the title of Lenin’s Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder. Whereas the left, a big tent term for a myriad of incompatible ideologies, aims merely to act as an opposition towards the present order for the sake of it, communists have a coherent vision for how to defeat the system: by advancing history’s development to the next stage. The left, because of its lack of commitment to that central Marxist goal, naturally takes on an opportunistic role. Because when you want only to build a movement as an end in itself, rather than use this movement as a means for defeating the system, you become nothing more than an actor who benefits from discontent without helping solve the problems behind that discontent.
He’s still malding about “Sakaists” is all I take away from this. Frankly, I used to respect Shea-- but this just sounds like settler guilt to me; twice in a row at that. I find it interesting that he has these issues with Sakai, and presents no real alternative other than the typical white left “sit down, shut up, toe the party line, and 'class war only; there is no racial question”'.
Mentalities like his are exactly why I don’t trust a single party with settler leadership-- because they all say the same shit at the end of the day, and for people who claim to have a scientific approach to Marxism, they’re REMARKABLY incapable of seeing that the parameters that worked for the Soviet condition WILL NOT WORK FOR US, and that the contradictions we face INHERENTLY HAVE RACIAL MOTIVES WOVEN INTO THEM.
These are not Marxists to me; but settler-chauvinist, nigh-on white supremacist dogmatists. I said it. tl;dr, I am still not convinced that New Afrikans don’t need to organize for our own self-determination, because I still cannot believe we will achieve equality arm-in-arm with not even the sons and daughters of antebellum oppressors, but those who show every day that they will oppress again.
While I respect your willingness to call a spade a spade as you see something as such, I have to disagree with much of what you have said. I’m unfamiliar with Sakai, however comrade Shea does not come off as a settler-minded person to me. I will also note that although there are far less minorities in the bourgeois class, there still are some, and so a race-based analysis will not suffice here as a shortcut towards class, nor should it even if this were the case as liberalism is the ideology which views the world according to conqueror v conquered constantly seeking exploitation of another, as Marxists we view the world through dialectical materialist and historical development - the clashing of opposites based on their contradictions to create a new tomorrow, not the outright rejection of a portion of that synthesis.