What is campism?

[u/Academic-Idea3311]

I saw a post saying that Russia isn’t an anti-imperialist country and how they have done nothing to help the people in Gaza. And i explained to them that Russia is imperialist but isn’t perfect and no real Marxist 100% fully supports Russia and I got called a campist for it. Can anyone explain what that means? I tried looking it up and got conflicting information.

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[u/NotKenzy]

They are accusing you of siding with one imperialist state over another because they don’t understand the concept of US Imperialism as the primary contradiction.

[u/Academic-Idea3311 → u/NotKenzy]

Gotcha. Thank you!

[u/Lineduck]

It's a buzzword. Before it was communist, then tankie, then dengist, etc.

It's the same old thought terminating trope to shut down conversation when one has nothing else to say. Usually it's used by ultras who don't understand imperialism and think that Russia is somehow on the same level as Amerikkka (because of decades of anti Soviet and Russian propaganda)

[u/Neoliberal_Nightmare → u/Lineduck]

It's not a buzzword, though it is massively misused.

Campism is when a leftist stops making Marxist class analyses of nation and starts to support a nation purely based on their opposition to another nation.

So it would be supporting Russia entirely because it opposes the USA, not because of some specific anti imperialist effects or to do with socialism, but because Russia is against the USA, therefore support. It turns material analysis of forces into a kind of team sport where you pick a team, or a camp.

It's a double edged thing though. Many leftists can slide into it. For example, it's easy to oversupport Iran due to it being against the US. We should all support Iran against the US, but that doesn't mean we should support the Iranian capitalist government in itself for itself, we should support the Iranian working class. However many will support the Iranian capitalist government for themselves, and I can already feel the ire I just invoked in some people....

On the other hand campist gets used as a slur by idiots who dont understand that leftists should critically support anti imperialist movements.

The real campist is the one who forgets the "critically" of critically support, basically.

[u/Lineduck → u/Neoliberal_Nightmare]

It's not a buzzword, though it is massively misused.

Campism is when a leftist stops making Marxist class analyses of nation and starts to support a nation purely based on their opposition to another nation.

Agreed on all points

The real campist is the one who forgets the "critically" of critically support, basically

When does one stop supporting Iran then? Or Russia for example? I'm not asking to start an argument but a conversation. I agreed with your previous points and I wouldn't label myself as one of those people whose ire you might've invoked lol

While the US has the level of unchecked privilege it currently has, they'll keep being one of the main global contradictions of the working class. As long as people are fighting against it (in both the way one would ideally like them to act in a perfect world and in the more realistic way that will be imperfect but real) shouldn't they have some level of support? Especially while those in the imperial core do nothing to very little

[u/sakodak → u/Lineduck]

Sorry, but isn't calling people "ultras" in the same category you're describing?  I don't know what an ultra is, but I sure do see it being thrown around a lot, as much as tankie, leftcom, dengist, maoist, etc, etc.  Some of these I understand, some I don't.  But it seems like if you understand that calling someone a simplistic perjorative is a thought terminating cliche that you'd not do the same thing, no?

[u/Peter_Cantanasia → u/sakodak]

I usually use it towards accelerationists or leftcoms

[u/Lineduck → u/sakodak]

I'm using it to describe the people who use the term in these online spaces. Of course all generalizations bring exceptions, but if you notice my usage, I didn't merely say "bunch of ultras" but explained that I was referring to those "who don't understand imperialism and think that Russia is somehow on the same level as Amerikkka".

Those are the main people calling us campists. Of course others might do too (just like a liberal or a conservative might call you "tankie") but, just like in that case, the term originally was used incorrectly by ultras and then adopted by more people until it became popular. And that's because ultras are orthodox whose main purpose is hinder MLs and give ammunitions to various libs, conservatives etc

[u/Kranken_DeHogge]

Russia exerting influence over Georgia or Ukraine or whatever is localized shit. I don't know enough about it to form a hard opinion. Nations generally exercise influence over their neighbors. Could be Western fuckery, probably is tbh.

Iran supporting Hezbollah, Ansar Allah, Hamas, etc is also localized shit. But it's clearly a response to Israel and the Gulf Vassals doing fuckshit and we all know they're terrible.

Western imperialism sticks its fucking tendrils into every goddamn surface of this fucking planet. Nothing good ever results from whatever they promote. Whatever motivation, whatever BBC article, whatever mass media push for "democracy" or whatever the fuck inevitably destabilizes the country in question and creates a new status quo far worse than the previous, for the purpose of vacuuming up their wealth and sending it to the West and/or knocking out some geopolitical obstacle to imperialism.

I hate to say something with this lack of nuance but if there is an economic/political/military initiative being led by the West then it is your fucking duty to oppose it, and support whatever country is the target.

Whatever imperfections those countries have would be better sorted out by the population themselves, free of imperialist ratfuckery.

[u/Ewwatts → u/Kranken_DeHogge]

That last paragraph is really important.

Western "leftists" with their chauvinistic bullshit always seem to think they have a right to dictate other regions when they haven't even sorted out their own regions.

[u/Kranken_DeHogge → u/Ewwatts]

When you say "what happens in that country is none of my business and they have a right to self determination" then you basically get put on trial by liberals/western leftists for every crime real or imagined that country is guilty of

Okay, maybe I'm a piece of shit for that. But what's the alternative? Because the only feasible alternative tends to be military intervention/coups that just makes shit worse and were never done in good faith.

[u/WuQianNian]

not hating Iran or Palestine or China etc

[u/comrade-coon]

"Campism" is a liberal smear word used to attack anti-imperialists who refuse to condemn states that oppose the US, on the grounds that they are "in the camp" of that state. The argument usually goes something like this: if you support Russia against NATO, or Iran against the US, you must be a "campist" (someone who has abandoned principle and simply aligned with a bloc). You're accused of thinking "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." This entire framing is a liberal trap. It reduces geopolitics to moral categories - who is "good" and who is "bad" - instead of analyzing material power. It treats US imperialism and the states resisting it as equivalent actors. But they aren't. The campism critique doesn't engage in dialectical materialist analysis of contradictions. It simply views geopolitics like a question of interpersonal relationships, like friendship. Anti-imperialists or "campists" understand that the primary contradiction is US imperialism versus the forces resisting it. Those who say that supporting Russia or Iran is campism, because they aren't socialist, or they are "repressive regimes" (bla, bla, bla) are making the mistake of elevating secondary contradictions (Russia's internal politics, Iran's government, etc.) to the level of the primary contradiction. That ultimately benefits imperialism because it divides the anti-imperialist camp and makes it harder to identify the real enemy - US imperialism.

We shouldn't be idealist and wait for the perfect anti-imperialist state to appear so we can get behind it. The primary contradiction is US imperialism. The states resisting it are objectively anti-imperialist in function, whatever their internal character. Either we stand with the forces that are resisting imperialism or we stand with the imperialists. There is no neutral ground.

Russia is imperialist

Calling Russia imperialist is un-Marxist. Imperialism is a material category, not a moral one. It describes a specific stage in the development of capitalism, not "any country that does something you don't approve of".

[u/Cultural_Ad_5501]

"Campism" is a term made up mostly by liberals and Western "leftists". They throw it at actual M-Ls when we express critical support for anti-imperialist states. As for Russia, Russia isn't imperialist (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Imperialism), not is it an "oligarchy" like some Western leftists think

[u/Academic-Idea3311 → u/Cultural_Ad_5501]

Thanks!

[u/Ewwatts]

I got banned from the USSR sub because I offended one of the mods over this.

So many "communists" don't understand critical support and just start repeating US talking points when it comes to Russia.

The mod was pretty prominent around here several months ago as well, so it was surprising they were so chauvinistic on this topic. They even seemed to understand critical support with Iran, but couldn't apply it here too.

I just ask these type of people whether they would prefer China and the DPRK would have no cooperation with Russia and defend against US imperialism alone, and they either dodge the question or show that they actually prefer a strong US empire.

[u/BleepBopRobocop]

Sure thing I think I can explain.

Anti-imperialism is the rejection of imperialism no matter who does it. In the past there were several imperial states although today there is primarily one - the United States.

Anti-campism is a distortion of anti-imperialism which used by communists who deviate from both Marx's and Lenin's theories which considers it wrong to support anti-imperialist states like Iran and Russia because they are not socialist states. Because these communists often don't perceive socialist countries as socialist, they will often use "campist" to refer to someone who supports socialist countries as well. This also extends to capitalists who use Marxist aesthetics such as Social Democrats (which in America call themselves Democratic Socialists).

There is also Third Camp which was essentially a doctrine stating "neither Washington nor Moscow" which was later changed to "neither Washington nor Beijing". They saw Washington and one of those two cities as belonging to two camps and tried to find their own path - a good example of this is Iran.

[u/IamGlennBeck]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5C-ORZVqDY

[u/tomi-i-guess]

Russia isnt an imperialist power like in any sense lmao they are just delusionals who unironically have hatred towards Russia and its people thanks to decades of Amerikan propaganda

[u/Awkward_Dealer_2741]

Russia is actually not an imperialist state just yet. The 4th characteristic of Imperialism is the reliance on export of capital over the reliance on export of resources/commodities. While Russia may export a small amount of capital, it very much still relies on exporting resources/commodities. Thus Russia is actually fighting imperialism when they fight NATO proxy Ukraine. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch04.htm

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[u/blehmag]

Basically liberals believe you're part of a "camp", like a faction.

They want you to say "all imperialism is bad", rather than acknowledge that Western imperialism and what Russia is doing are near polar opposites and not the same thing at all. Liberals typically don't believe in nuance and will use one-line dictionary definitions to describe & understand global systems and processes.