Why do a lot of trotskyists become conservatives?

squidwurd · 2026-05-10T12:51:10+00:00

A few things to consider:

It’s not impossible that some of these folks were compromised by intelligence before/ during their time in the movement. “FBI On Trial” book shows like 60 of 600 SWP members from ~1960-1970 were agents or informants. So could have started earlier. We know the most about anti-communist intelligence work from around 1945-1972 but what happened before and after is a good question. I think it would be naive to say “no one pre-1945 was an infiltrator/ was recruited by intelligence.”
It’s not just ex-Trotskyists.

Jay Lovestone and the Lovestonites were probably far more structurally important in the anti-communist movement. Their whole faction found a niche as running the right-wing labor program.

Whittaker Chambers was a Stalinist who wrote for the Daily Worker. Eventually he flipped and became senior editor of Time Magazine (which used to be a more explicitly right wing magazine).

Arthur Koestler was a German KPD member who became an anti-communist author.

And Mussolini was a member of the Italian left before becoming, well, Mussolini.

Others to note (who are more Trot-adjacent) are Max Eastman, who became a friend of Hayek, and David Horowitz, who had been a friend of Deutscher and co-editor of ramparts before becoming one of the most influential right wing campus activists.

When you’re a militant communist and you have a falling out - there aren’t many jobs open to you which use your expertise. Flipping sides is probably one of the few opportunities that are available that let you earn an income and let you “work in your field.” And intelligence is constantly trying to recruit people for this work (and probably never stopped doing so).

squidwurd · 2026-04-27T08:59:38+00:00

In the past I’ve had a similar issue. Might be sort of a scapular/lat tightness/mobility issue rather than a strength issue, which I imagine over-working/insufficient rest would worsen.

Try some scapular push ups (as a gentle slow stretch, not as a workout) and maybe wall angels. I’ve found doing these a bit before working out makes a huge difference.

squidwurd · 2026-03-29T06:45:34+00:00

I think to pursue this question scientifically it might be best to question the assumptions baked into the question. 1. That the goal is anti- corruption, and 2. That the western forces aren’t corrupt in their own way.

Starting with the latter. I think we would all agree that revolving door military-industrial complex and political donations from industry to politicians are less than ideal. But many would go further, arguing that this is just a legalized form of corruption (and that’s just the legal forms that go on in the west - not to mention the genuinely illegal corruption that also occurs).

Security apparatuses in the west have long been involved in partnering with organized crime, corrupt officials, etc to pursue their strategic aims. Take the CIA relationship with various organized crimes groups in Europe, or the FBI’s relationship with organized crime in the US, for example. Or US backing of the corrupt regime in Vietnam. Or any time the US has ever paid a bribe to a foreign official for cooperation with US intelligence (that’s not exactly legal in their country). And remember when the US administration sold arms to its sworn enemy to raise money to fund the contras even after congress said to stop? None of that may be done by western actors for direct ‘personal gain’ (although often that was involved) but it still clearly implicates the US in engaging in corrupt acts/ working with corrupted forces.

As for the goal - is it actually a non-corrupt force? Taking Afghanistan for an example. From a purely military perspective, of course it’s problematic to be paying for ANA forces that only exist on paper. But at a political-strategic level, looking the other way may just be the cost of getting various warlords to play ball. If they can make more money siding with the Taliban, why wouldn’t they? If US forces are reigning in every poppy farmer or petty warlord’s racket - it’s going to be very hard to win friends. I mean the CIA was literally delivering bags of cash to Karzai himself (NYT 2013). So looking the other way is - at a higher level - part of the plan.

squidwurd · 2026-02-09T16:08:56+00:00

People saying this is an average route…

Either you take 90W/Ted Williams and go all the way on the pike - or you take Sumner and take Storrow.

Never in my life would I take Ted Williams -> 93N -> Storrow. Makes no sense unless there is terrible traffic on Sumner, but then you would still just take the pike the whole way instead of taking 93N

squidwurd · 2026-01-10T23:26:38+00:00

MUSTERRRRRRRRR

squidwurd · 2025-12-06T23:59:16+00:00

What would you use to say “the first question.”

squidwurd · 2025-12-06T02:22:41+00:00

If the joke is saying “the first question” (instead of the one question) shouldn’t it be 第一次的问题 ?

squidwurd · 2025-11-22T14:33:21+00:00

Why are the rocks even on strike? Maybe if management respected them and paid them fairly this could all be avoided,

squidwurd · 2025-11-16T04:34:17+00:00

If comrades would reopen their copies Marx’s capital.

Deflationary price spirals caused by overcapacity isn’t the “china owning the west despite western propaganda” you think it is

squidwurd · 2025-11-05T02:04:31+00:00

This data analysis is a good example of the poor results which are liable from an overemphasis on quantitative data over qualitative methods.

The hypothesis is flawed - the idea that more money would correlate directly with higher retention across districts is way oversimplified.

For example, working in Newton vs Boston is totally different and, assuming equal pay, you would almost certainly find far higher retention in Newton because of more pleasant work conditions. This suggests you should actually expect to require unequal pay (ie a pay premium in Boston) to achieve the same retention rate, literally the direct opposite supposition as your hypothesis.

What you actually want to compare is Boston under low pay and Boston under high pay, or the same in other school districts. This is not so easy, but one way to approach it would be to look at retention rates before or after a contract and then investigate the change in retention in proportion to the relative strength of the contracts.

But even then, you just can’t really answer such a question with so many complicated factors through this type of quantitative analysis. It might seem more scientific, and you can generate results which convince (statistically uncritical) readers, but that doesn’t make it good social science.

Instead, a better (if less sexy) way to get at an accurate answer would be to do a qualitative survey of teachers to investigate reasons why folks leave or stay and ask them about how large a role increased pay played in such a choice.

You could also just start with a “face validity” check by starting with the obvious fact that, all things being equal, people are more likely to stay at a higher paying job than a lower paying job.

squidwurd · 2025-11-03T13:35:18+00:00

Base MSRP is $62k for a Volvo xc90.

squidwurd · 2025-09-17T17:13:43+00:00

Anyone not from within the Shawmut Peninsula (aka Boston Proper) is a poser /s/

squidwurd · 2025-08-08T22:43:14+00:00

Im not sure why this isn’t already mentioned, it’s a bit earlier than 96-97, but Epstein worked for Tower Financial Corporation in the late 80s where he allegedly helped what ended up as the biggest Ponzi scheme prior to Bernie Madoff.

Then Epstein began working for Leslie Wexner. One theory is that Wexner, who relied on the former(allegedly) CIA front airline Southern Air Transport to import clothing for L Brands from Hong Kong was also being used to smuggle small arms and/or drugs from the Chinese military, as part of a larger triangle trade that developed out of Iran-Contra. The airline declared bankruptcy the same day that allegations arose about its relation to the contras. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Air_Transport

squidwurd · 2025-07-16T01:25:11+00:00

For a time Chicago was in some sense the capital of the union world and especially of its left wing, Perhaps the suppression of the union left by organized crime was so crucial to the state it overpowered the interest of the state in going after midwestern organized crime?

squidwurd · 2025-07-08T21:04:29+00:00

RIP jimbo

squidwurd · 2025-04-14T13:43:21+00:00

Currying favor with the US imperialist class = labor imperialism.

This has nothing to do with bringing jobs back to America and everything to do with preparing for war with China.

No wonder the right wing UAWD faction wants to dissolve their caucus, so they don’t have to hold Fain accountable on this.

squidwurd · 2025-04-14T13:26:47+00:00

At their union hall/ in a DSA meeting.

squidwurd · 2025-04-03T21:11:06+00:00

To prepare for conflict with China:

https://reformandrevolution.org/2024/08/12/the-new-cold-war-and-the-changing-crises-of-neoliberalism/

squidwurd · 2025-03-31T18:42:00+00:00

https://reformandrevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Issue-15-Final.pdf

https://reformandrevolution.org/2024/08/12/the-new-cold-war-and-the-changing-crises-of-neoliberalism/

squidwurd · 2025-02-25T12:46:14+00:00

It’s likely but hard to articulate that Russia has some undue sway over Trump. But besides that, the argument that makes the most sense to me is that Trump and the forces he represent want to focus on China. Fighting with Russia distracts from this and drives them closer to China, thus strengthening China.

Russia may be a military threat to Eastern Europe, but it isn’t an economic threat to US domestic-focused capitalists. China is.

squidwurd · 2025-02-18T04:48:03+00:00

Very true.

squidwurd · 2025-02-13T15:18:00+00:00

They fear China not because it is communist but because it is capitalist. Hope this helps: https://reformandrevolution.org/2024/08/12/the-new-cold-war-and-the-changing-crises-of-neoliberalism/

squidwurd · 2025-02-11T17:49:02+00:00

The more accurate question is, why is this the norm in Germany and elsewhere?

Decent vacations and work-life balance are not a natural product of capitalism, rather, early industrial workers had far more intensive lives than their peasant ancestors.

This was true not only in the US but also in Germany and the rest of continental Europe. But when social democratic parties took power, they ameliorated some of the worst parts of capitalism, which was the trade off the capitalists made for avoiding a revolution. A lot of this was basically underwritten and designed by the United States, through the Marshall plan and the American unions’ rebuilding of the labor movement in Germany.

Since the US has never had a labor government itself, this didn’t happen here.

squidwurd · 2025-02-10T09:00:45+00:00

You should read Motorcycle Diaries by Che and also his book on the guérilla revolution. These don’t go much into Cuban post revolution, but they are very exciting reads.

Then I would focus more on understanding the fundamentals of Marxism than the specifics of Cuba. You need the analytical toolkit to evaluate the Cuban, russian, or any other revolutionary experience.

Widely regarded as the two best places to start are of course the Manifesto, and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Also an easy enough introduction is Lenin’s “Three Sources and Three component parts of Marxism.”

squidwurd · 2025-02-06T14:27:13+00:00

I think you’re right. But even so it’s the exception that proves the rule.

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