lol I just realized it was them that brought up the term in the conversation. In their defense it says in your substack description "I write about geopolitics,.. " so maybe that's where they got it from. But I agree calling you a "geopolitical analyst" was putting words in your mouth for the purpose of slander.
TAVAR
joined 11 months ago
Damn. Their last "stance" was like them eagerly byting on a cyanide capsule after somebody asked them for the time.
Geopolitics [...] is obviously reactionary to everyone who understands Marxism
TIL Lenin didn't understand Marxism and was reactionary
Fuck. I feel sick
Was Lenin talking about the impacts of those concepts?
Bc I would even consider diamat foundational to CS (which would only strengthen your point)
Anyway there is a more central issue in their argument though:
If I make a good faith attempt at understanding the point of this other person: they could be talking about CS bc of its central role in driving historical progress. In that sense their focus on CS (vs LTV/diamat) is understandable, "replacing" that with "national struggle" is not admissible for a marxist.
But it can't be denied that what Lenin (the staunch geopolitical analyst that he was) did constituted an extension to Marxism that recognizes state/imperial competition (what they mean when they say "national struggle") as a driving historical force. Considering nation states are a tool of the ruling class this doesn't constitute a break from Marxism. So they were creating a false dichotomy.
Lenins additon has some grave consequences however when it comes to interpreting how class struggle manifests. Some trots apparently consider the Palestinian struggle in an utterly perverted way, where the Palestinian working class needs to rise up against their ruling class (and they don't mean the Israeli class that is ruling over them), while a Leninist correctly identifies thei national struggle as anti-imperialist and consistent with class struggle overall.
So maybe the person you encountered was just affected by trot brainrot but I believe they were just not liking your opinions shying away from an argument and cowardly retreating into ostensibly principled territory, a behaviour that always creates a shitload of confusion and toxicity, pushes a movement towards dogmatism and harms the ideological struggle in general. This sounds exaggerated in this case, but I really can't stand this "reaching for a priciple" just to feel safe. Same reason why they immediately compared you to fascists. Whoever reads this, don't fucking do this.
Of course Marxists can write/discuss about quantitaive production of munition, the depleation of weapons stockpile, logistics in war. Barring us from doing that is barring us from assessing at what is going on, in a way it is them that are turning away from scientific socialism and from Marxsim towards idealism.