Michael Hudson is not a based progressive, he is a PB academic with a long background working for banks and other capitalist institutions. He posts his work on the literal fascist website Unz review (which he still does years after being notified it was a literal fascist website in case he was unaware) where the comments there are full of people picking up on his fascist and anti-Semitic dog whistles and running with them. All his focus on “finance capital” is quite interesting when you look at his writing about Jesus being killed by Jewish financiers and how his solution to fight finance capital is essentially empowering industrial capital. What other groups were very pro industrial capital and focused heavily on Jews as a financial elite? Probably some of the ones who are big fans of Unz Review, so Hudson seems to have chosen the right place to voluntarily publish his work online.

He was raised by Trots and his hyper focus on economics allows him to avoid any revolutionary analysis; Hudson is essentially pushing a patsoc/demsoc narrative about “fixing” the US economy by trying to roll back finance capital and do some New Deal shit which is caping for capital, not fighting it.

There may be value in his knowledge as an economist but he’s absolutely not based or someone I would look to for any info outside of very specific economic data that also isn’t super relevant in any organizing arena I’ve ever seen.

As far as Roderic Day goes, I’m not on social media to know about how terminally online he, his posts, or personality are, but I have read a few of his essays which I found very well done and informative.

I’d really like to know what the “Christian nonsense” part is about lol.

And hexbear is very self-aware that it’s just an obscure site in some dusty corner of the internet for hanging out and shitposting, there’s no pretense of being an “organization”

Also, we constantly tell people to read theory, even the comment he used as an example does in no way refute that, I have no idea how he got from “not all knowledge comes from books and articles” to “don’t read theory”

I like Roderic. He reminds us (communists) that it’s not all memes and fun, there’s serious effort that needs to be made and the course this effort should take is found in theory.

Yes you could say he’s sometimes a bit too harsh in his criticism, but he also makes tons of good points and we need people like him too, with or without their flaws. Nobody’s perfect. He’s harsh, but he’s not insulting (that I’ve seen) and in the end he does it to reach a better understanding of the matter with the people he struggles with. It took me a while in my life to detach from “neutral language criticism” and not see it as harsh criticism because it didn’t have a word of praise in it (like “you’re partly correct” or “you’re on the right track but”). This is what he does, is neutral criticism. He doesn’t go out of his way to insult or demean you but makes you see his point.

He spends a lot of time on Twitter, sure why not, but he’s also one of the only people there that will talk to you in DMs and answer your questions there, and even if you have 2 followers – many do not bother to talk to you either because they have too many notifications (he has a big account so I’m sure he has the notifs too) or because you don’t have followers. Also anyone can have a Twitter account, and I know many big accounts like Roderic’s that are not half as good at Marxism as he is.

His thing, from what I can tell, is to engage with the points and the criticism. Many people dismiss criticisms because they see it as wrong from the get-go, and don’t even want to try and falsify it on that basis. He pushes us rather to engage with it, even if it’s wrong, in order to show why it’s wrong or doesn’t apply, thereby reaching a higher level of understanding from both parties. He can be wrong too and doesn’t claim to know everything.

Yay, he’s right. He’s a little too online, but principled. I may be why he knows about hexbear. Idk what he said about JT, but it was probably reasonable. I have my own criticisms of him, but he’s overall positive. Also, Hudson’s a total revisionist. I struggled against that stance and was defeated.

And this ain’t the first time, Roderick’s a bit terminally online, arguing against other based progressive like JT (Second Thought) and Michael Hudson…

Why shouldn’t he? Hudson’s following reproduces Industrial Capitalist apologia in the same way that fed Social Chauvinism in Europe prior to WW1 (and during the height of Imperialism’s African carve). I can see the consequences of Hudson in the patsoc space. Second Thought’s video on MMT was uncritical and like Hudson reproduces petty booj cope about “the economy” and reform.

Hudson and ST are Marxist educators, they should be criticized so that their performance at that role can improve. If we are giving these people a living as revolutionary educators, shouldn’t they be held to the highest standards?

The western left has a deep cultural lack of seriousness (I wonder why that is?). Memes and jokes are fine but bigotry and anti-intellectualism shouldn’t be passed off as jokes to avoid criticism.