- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
- cross-posted to:
- chapotraphouse@hexbear.net
cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5285874
Hi, I’m here to announce that everyone pushing the standard Hexbear party line on the protest movement is a loser and wrong. I already know the weak-ass arguments you’re gonna make and every single one of them reveals your disconnection from any actual organizing. Let’s go through them one by one. If you have another that you think Marx Failed to Consider, please bring it up and I will explain how you are wrong in that way as well.
This was funded by the Waltons
No, one Walton bought an ad in the NYT. Who fucking cares? It has no material bearing on the movement whatsoever. There’s no organization money is being funneled to other than the Democratic Party and Indivisble, which is not different in any way. The on-the-ground organizers in most cities and towns are not receiving a penny from the left’s George Soros conspiracy. They’re just normal people (and, to the next point, lots of leftists).
The Democrats are using this to steal the leftist energy of the masses
The Democrats certainly want to do that, but on the ground reports indicate they are losing all over the country. That’s because leftists (especially
) are not leaving this space uncontested. I have spent an enormous amount of time putting in the work to earn the trust and legitimacy necessary to place a bunch of literal revolutionary communists in the leadership of the local movement. Not in some sneaky, behind the scenes way, but out in the open, succeeding specifically because we are literal revolutionary communists who never shut up about it. The Democrats, by my accounting, are losing the struggle in more places than not. If you refuse to engage because you’re afraid the Dems will suck your leftist soul, you’re just conceding the struggle and granting them victory. They don’t co-opt by pressing a button, they co-opt because they have the resources to take leadership and then defuse. So far they have failed to do so specifically because the space is not empty and the communists are fighting harder to reach the masses (since we actually have an appealing program).
The attendees are all Kamala-loving liberals who just want to go back to brunch
If you had ever bothered to go to one of these events and talk politics to people, you’ll discover a very broad array of political perspectives, including a strong trend towards explicit support for socialism. Yes, of course, the PMC bug-eating libs are there - who cares? They are by no means the only attendees. Maybe you’re just Too Cool to be around someone who reminds you of your mom, but the rest of us are finding deep political discontent and activating it. When one of my comrades gets on the mic and says “we need to break from the democrats and do a literal socialist revolution”, the crowd response, by and large, is incredibly positive. The retired dentists and accountants in the crowd grumble and whine, but they are a minority - and they don’t leave. They stay and listen to the arguments we make. They say things like “you’re right, I just don’t think it’s possible”. They very, very rarely say “you’re going too far”.
This is a disorganized mess that’s going to fizzle out
50501 and other decentralized spontaneous protest movements never last, but they do give an opportunity for dedicated political organizers to intervene on a stage where thousands of disaffected liberals and Democrat voters are asking “what is to be done?”. If you decide not to show up and answer that question, the Democrat machine will coordinate the demobilization of this movement. If you do show up and you deliver the political argument you believe in. If you show up with the AV equipment, safety marshalls, march route, signs, and speaker list - the bare minimum for a halfway serious organizer - then you don’t just hand out flyers and talk at a table but set the entire political line of the event. And in doing so, you demonstrate the leadership of the socialist movement and win a lot of those attendees to your side. If you can plug them into actual organizing work, you can bring them into permanent political motion. Does it matter if 95% of these people just go home and never bother to do anything besides another protest? If those 5% join the movement in a meaningful way, that’s half a million new comrades.
Mao says: “All work done for the masses must start from their needs and not from the desire of any individual, however well-intentioned. It often happens that objectively the masses need a certain change, but subjectively they are not yet conscious of the need, not yet willing or determined to make the change. In such cases, we should wait patiently. We should not make the change until, through our work, most of the masses have become conscious of the need and are willing and determined to carry it out. Otherwise we shall isolate ourselves from the masses. Unless they are conscious and willing, any kind of work that requires their participation will turn out to be a mere formality and will fail.”
Stop thinking about what you want to do and achieve and start thinking about the fact that we needs tens of millions of people to support revolutionary socialism in the US in order to get anything done. They are out in the streets begging for you to explain this to them.
These are just peaceful protests that won’t achieve anything because they aren’t revolutionary.
Lenin says: “What grounds are there for assuming that the “great, victorious, world” revolution can and must employ only revolutionary methods? There are none at all. The assumption is a pure fallacy; this can be proved by purely theoretical propositions if we stick to Marxism. The experience of our revolution also shows that it is a fallacy. From the theoretical point of view—foolish things are done in time of revolution just as at any other time, said Engels, and he was right. We must try to do as few foolish things as possible, and rectify those that are done as quickly as possible, and we must, as soberly as we can, estimate which problems can be solved by revolutionary methods at any given time and which cannot.”
You’re doing the ultra-leftism of conflating tactics with strategy. Our tactic in this moment is to intervene in these protests to convince people of the necessity of a revolutionary socialist political organization as the only solution to our sick society. Right now, mass revolutionary socialist consciousness and organization does not exist in the USA. Therefore, it is impossible to carry out open revolutionary militancy. If the current crop of people who are in some way directly involved in revolutionary socialist organizing (certainly a lower bar than revolutionary guerrilla warfare or sabotage) turned today to armed struggle, all ~100,000 of them would lose. The broader periphery of people who semi-passively support that objective through attendance at events and monetary contribution is probably a few million. The masses who would passively support probably number in the tens of millions, but that passive support is not particularly useful. And the number of people who would simply sit by and watch it happen is probably over 100 million. Every one of those groups needs to be elevated to the next stage - observer to passive supporter, passive supporter to semi-passive periphery, semi-passive periphery to revolutionary organizer, revolutionary organizer to doing the literal revolution. Each of these layers of the movement have a symbiotic relationship with the others that strengthen the entire struggle.
Here’s the key lesson: WE DON’T HAVE ENOUGH PEOPLE TO WIN VIOLENT STRUGGLE AND YOU NEED TO GO WHERE THE MASSES ARE TO RALLY THEM TO OUR CAUSE.
Amerikkkans will never do a revolution because they are labor aristokkkrauts
Ok, thank you for you contribution, you can resume sitting in a hole since your prescription is inactivity.
Please tell me your other weak-ass reasons why you’re correct to sit on your ass.
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As someone who just went to their local No King Protest, fucking go. Yeah there were a lot of libs. But DSA and PSL both had significant presences.
Hell, even the local anarchist crust punk kids, with their Food Not Bombs chapter had a literature table!
OP is correct, much like the Bolsheviks organizing in the Tsarists trade unions, you should join an org, if you aren’t already, and go where the masses are. Don’t be a lib, folks!
The party of the proletariat must learn to catch every liberal just at the moment when he is prepared to move forward an inch, and make him move forward a yard.
Lassoo them libs
Yeehaw Pardner
Personally I think my mutual aid org and union organizing work is a better use of time, and a similar or more effective recruiting tool. I only have so much time to put into pushing the communism button.
If you’ve got nothing better to do, likely true for most leftists and many local orgs, it is indeed a good place to go recruiting. There’s also communist-run No Kings locals, where PSL and such are running the event while using 50501 branding, which is probably a worthy effort. Maybe I’ll be able to steal away some time to show up for a short while.
Ideally, an org could decide collectively whether to dedicate some resources to participating in the protest, what the goal of that participation is, and whether it’s worth diverting people’s time and energy being spent elsewhere to this aim. Unless your org is tiny/has a very limited scope (which is fine, too. For example, the food not bombs chapter i volunteered at was a handful of peopn le who were active in other orgs, but we only just get together to cook), theyou should be able to allocate resources according to the local reality and needs.
Being prescriptive about these things is literally anti-dialectical and intellectually lazy. Leadership should be able to “read the vibe” and decide whether it’s in their interest to participate or not, beyond personal opinions. And then, if participating or not was a bad idea, then the strategy should include that feedback when the next opportunity presents itself.
I’m not going because I wouldn’t ever go to the United States for any reason
i’d love to see the us one day but if they ask me if i support terrorism i’d have to say yes. Guess I can fly to canada and make it to mexico illegally
Been thinking about filling the immigration form preemptively so that I can be banned from the US, what do you think?
i’ve been thinking of doing that with the britties. Go to their ambassy and say “hi i support palestine action can i be added to the terrorist list pls”
Are there any solidarity protests abroad?
I’m not aware of any where I live in solidarity with Americans, only right wing farmer protests :(
The problem with the American left is actually worse than you thought.
I try very hard to understand from their websites and programs, whether it’s DSA or PSL, and you literally cannot tell what is their strategy to take political power.
Is it through taking over the federal government? If so, by what means? elections? running 100 candidates over the next 5 years? how exactly are you going to achieve that? how exactly are you going to fight the police state?
Is it through taking political power at the local and municipal level and infiltrate the key infrastructure of the countries with a vast network of grassroots activists?
Who are your friends? Who are your enemies? If you cannot answer these questions, you literally cannot formulate a strategy. You don’t know who and where to organize with. And when you can’t do that, you would not know what to do with the No Kings protest.
Identifying the principal contradictions of the United States in the year 2025 is going to be the first step:
Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies. A revolutionary party is the guide of the masses, and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolutionary party leads them astray. To ensure that we will definitely achieve success in our revolution and will not lead the masses astray, we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies. To distinguish real friends from real enemies, we must make a general analysis of the economic status of the various classes in Chinese society and of their respective attitudes towards the revolution.
From Mao’s Analyses of the Classes in Chinese Society, 1926
In other words, they are not even at step one yet, they are at step zero.
It’s actually good thing to tell people to read Lenin, Mao and Gramsci and you’ll see how far they have thought out the key pieces of a coherent strategy to win political power from their respective historical circumstances.
Who are your friends? Who are your enemies? If you cannot answer these questions, you literally cannot formulate a strategy. You don’t know who and where to organize with. And when you can’t do that, you would not know what to do with the No Kings protest.
People still refuse to recognize the Democrats as the enemy. This is one of the tragedies of the US left. You can’t possibly hope to triumph against an enemy without first recognizing it as such.
I try very hard to understand from their websites and programs, whether it’s DSA or PSL, and you literally cannot tell what is their strategy to take political power.
DSA is not a coherent organisation, so don’t expect a united strategy from them. For PSL, this information is not going to be on their website. Specific strategies are discussed internally and I don’t really see a benefit in openly advertising them, especially because they will vary in time and space.
Specific strategies are discussed internally and I don’t really see a benefit in openly advertising them, especially because they will vary in time and space.
Tactics, maybe, but I don’t see why strategy should not be discussed openly?
All revolutionary movements require a coherent strategy to move forward, and that can only be achieved through open discussion (and in many instances, even resulting in bitter struggles between factions that splinter into multiple smaller entities convinced that their was the correct way).
Otherwise, how could one assess which one is the correct path for the movement when you have 10 different socialist parties trying to do their own thing but you’re not allowed to know what and how they want to do it?
Maybe you don’t want to join a party just to be told to help campaign for the liberals? How would you know that if the party does not wish to tell you its “secret” strategy?
And what’s the point of hiding your strategy anyway? The whole point is that the establishment cannot do anything to stop it.
My favorite example is the decisive strategy that sealed the victory of the Chinese communist party. So what if the KMT recognized that Mao’s land reform was critical for its success to unleash the revolutionary potential of the Chinese peasantry?
The KMT literally could not do anything about it because the entire party was so deeply entrenched with the feudal landlords that they had no counter-strategy against land reform. Their eventual defeat was certain even with a far superior military force because the communists had correctly identified the principal contradiction of the Chinese society at the time and figured out how to leverage that to create the conditions for a revolution. The KMT literally could not do anything but to see mass defects among its own ranks, and ultimately its own collapse.
It is no coincidence that the KMT could only initiate their own land reform after retreating to the island of Taiwan and establish their own foothold there, away from the vice grip of the feudal landlords in the mainland.
The stage of political consciousness in the US is probably much less developed than you realize. The masses have to learn lessons for themselves that other revolutionary movements learned long ago but that the US working class collectively forgot.
For DSA read the caucuses. There isn’t a strategy as they are actively struggling over what faction(s) seize power and decide the future. Many of the caucuses lay out their enemies allies and strategy but until one or a bloc of them win you won’t see coherent ideology form. Right now even in the smallest of local formations you’ll see struggles between factions.
DSA is in the Russian Social Democrat phase with both the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks struggling against each other as well as sub factions within those groups (if we’re being VERY generous with our comparisons).
Not just MLs are in it either but anarchists, trots, ultras and reformists have caucuses or just independent representative and semi coherent membership. So that is being contended with.
Some of the big ones are Socialist Majority Caucus (big in New York), Bread and Roses, Hexbear darling Red Star (from this I guess much of DSA would consider us far left?), Marxist Unity Group, Reform and Revolution and many others whose names I forgot. Each caucus has a somewhat coherent strategy that every other caucus somewhat or majorly opposed and it wasn’t until recently that the relative left of DSA (those that think some type of revolutionary action is needed) became a slim majority at a national level. I’m ignoring the massive amounts of independents with ideological indications for brevity.
PSL is exclusive and I’m part of some other orgs so have no fucking clue. The rest I’m not really sure, even those I’m in, for some of them the strategy is probably limited to cadre membership.
Edit: not sure if they’re able to talk of it but I believe @jack@hexbear.net is a member of PSL if you desire to investigate that potentially ask that user. (Praying you can @ in edits)
Edit X: Added other stuff too but drinking and don’t feel like formatting it in edit categories anymore atp.
Might make some friends there. Seems like a good opportunity to me
I’m gonna be a bit pedantic and mention that the Lenin quote comes from 1921. He’s writing to Pravda for the anniversary of the October revolution. He’s celebrating by being a big fucking nerd and writing about the problems not solved by revolution. He mentions that they’re facing a problem where they think that using revisionist solutions will work better than revolutionary ones. This is in regards to rebuilding industry after the revolution. He says they have been trying a revolutionary approach for a few years (completely break the old system to its foundations) but that they’re turning to reform (break as little ass possible and slowly remodel it). He’s talking about letting the capitalist businesses and petty production continue but slowly regulate them out of existence.
He’s addressing the criticism that revolutionary methods got them there, they were successful and continued to be successful, but now they were turning toward reform. He doesn’t really give a shit what his enemies think about the flip-flopping but he says the comrades do be having struggle sessions about it.
Then he goes on to talk about this unrealistic view of revolution as this grand, divine thing that must be absolute in it’s outlook towards reform at all times.
True revolutionaries have mostly come a cropper when they began to write “revolution” with a capital R, to elevate “revolution” to something almost divine, to lose their heads, to lose the ability to reflect, weigh and ascertain in the coolest and most dispassionate manner at what moment, under what circumstances and in which sphere of action you must act in a revolutionary manner, and at what moment, under what circumstances and in which sphere you must turn to reformist action. True revolutionaries will perish (not that they will be defeated from outside, but that their work will suffer internal collapse) only if they abandon their sober outlook and take it into their heads that the “great, victorious, world” revolution can and must solve all problems in a revolutionary manner under all circumstances and in all spheres of action. If they do this, their doom is certain.
Whoever gets such ideas into his head is lost because he has foolish ideas about a fundamental problem; and in a fierce war (and revolution is the fiercest sort of war) the penalty for folly is defeat.
He’s saying that even real heads get off track sometimes and start to idealize revolution but you have to stay woke and know when change course.
That’s when we come to OP’s (or the OP being quoted) section quoted.
What grounds are there for assuming that the “great, victorious, world” revolution can and must employ only revolutionary methods? There are none at all. The assumption is a pure fallacy; this can be proved by purely theoretical propositions if we stick to Marxism. The experience of our revolution also shows that it is a fallacy. From the theoretical point of view—foolish things are done in time of revolution just as at any other time, said Engels,[2] and he was right. We must try to do as few foolish things as possible, and rectify those that are done as quickly as possible, and we must, as soberly as we can, estimate which problems can be solved by revolutionary methods at any given time and which cannot. From the point of view of our practical experience the Brest peace was an example of action that was not revolutionary at all; it was reformist, and even worse, because it was a retreat, whereas, as a general rule, reformist action advances slowly, cautiously, gradually, and does not move backward. The proof that our tactics in concluding the Brest peace were correct is now so complete, so obvious to all and generally admitted, that there is no need to say any more about it.
Which leaves out the last part where Lenin talks about the Brest peace. The most important part here is that even though he admits it was revisionist, and a retreat, it was right in the end because they won. If they hadn’t won, then that tactic wouldn’t have been correct.
I think we should be careful in reading theory like they’re parables. This has a bit of a specific context and I don’t know if it applies to modern day US, or even collaborating with 2025 US Democrats on protesting. For much in the same reason I am softer on electoralism than other Lenin-quoters here, I am harder on this issue. We’re just not there yet. What guidance can Lenin give us on wearing a frog suit for 6 hours on a Saturday every 6 months? Questions dreamed up by the utterly inane. I think Lenin would be mostly kind about it, he would be like “oh yeah? that’s nice” like a parent looking at their kid’s scribbles. I don’t think it’s as dire as we need to separate the Mensheviks from the Bolsheviks on Hexbear.net.
Well said. Americans are long past drowned in anticommunist propaganda. They are now being forced to see the contradictions and failings of capitalism first hand. But with “communism bad” instilled in their minds essentially from birth, those that are opposed to the current regime see nowhere to turn except to the only opposition to it that they’ve ever known, that they’ve ever been allowed to know. The democrats and liberalism. But even they appear either weak and hollow or enablers/supporters of the fascist takeover of the country.
So many are standing on the precipice of an awakening. They need only be nudged in the right direction. Often by laying bare the hypocrisies of the system they think they’re fighting to preserve. The very system that led them into the crisis they now find themselves in.
I don’t think it’s as dire as we need to separate the Mensheviks from the Bolsheviks on Hexbear.net.
Firstly, this is a great expansion on the quoted text. But I have to ask, who are the Mensheviks and who are the Bolsheviks on Hexbear in your mind.
The Mensheviks are the people who don’t upbear my posts/comments and the bolsheviks are all my alts
I’m speaking against the tendency to split hexbear into good and bad leftists around issues like this. I don’t think people who are critical of these protests are ultras and I don’t think the people who engage in the protests are lib collaborators.
I think it’s really worth noting that the composition and material conditions of each no kings protest can vary significantly. The one I attended was deeply liberal and I knew from the second I arrived agitation would not get me far but I heard from comrades in other cities that the protestors were quite receptive to them. I even saw branches of PSL very heavily involved with some of the protests and gaining ground with the public. The best mine had was a small cpusa table off in the corner manned by 1 guy and I was in a massive city. Whether or not these protests are worth attending entirely depends on your locality, its on us communists to know our city and its people enough to determine if attendance is worth it.
Got it, and I think that’s a point we should all internalize.
fucking banger post
My reason, if I’m being honest, is that I’m scared. I’m trans and am afraid they’ll nab me from a crowd.
I’m gonna go anywhere and see what I can do, but I know lotsa people who won’t admit it are scared too. If you’ve got any words for us, I’m happy to hear em.
Fantastic post, mods, can we tagline this?
Being a minority at a mass protest already puts you in danger of being targeted by the state or a fascist gang, but there’s also the possibility of losing your job because you engaged anti-capitalist activities.
And that I think is the biggest fear that prevents most ordinary people from doing a general strike and actually coming together to form a proletarian movement: being singled out and getting reprisals from their employers which will lead to losing their incomes (which are already barely enough to live affordably for the majority), which will lead to them and their families potentially starving or going homeless. That’s something everyone can relate to regardless of their identity or background.
I know this isn’t theory or anything, but one of the things I liked about the Andor TV show is that it showed the very thing I’m talking about: people failing and leaving the cause because they were afraid of losing their livelihoods.
Calling people “ultras” in the real world isn’t going to convince them of anything. You have to put forward a persuasive argument that the revolution is worth the risk of losing everything and everyone you know.
There’s lots of valid reasons to avoid these protests. My reason is that my disability often prevents me from going. But I still encourage my comrades to go to these protests to educate as many people as they can.
In my trans community there are a few people who avoid certain protests for safety concerns. It’s a personal consideration to decide if you feel safe enough to go. But there are always people who are willing to go and I’ll always encourage them.
No you don’t understand, the correct thing to do is ignore the protests and instead focus on mutual aid and building networks. No I am not doing either of those things and couldn’t provide more specifics than that, but those are the correct things I have identified.
deleted by creator
Disco Elysium hits so hard it hurts sometimes.
I was told I just have to organize… my sock drawer isn’t bringing forth the revolution and I think I’m doing something wrong.
I’ve met so many communists even at my local lib protests in the deep south. If you wanna build networks, get out there and chat with a combination of libs and comrades (and the occasional single issue chud who is there because Trump said something that violated his single issue)
I’ll say what I said last time - the ulterior message is fair. But using playground insults to call other people infantile is just silly.
The actors that rig color revolutions go to these kinds of things to steer then in the direction they want.
They know how to harness political potential. Do we?
I’m literally funding a revolution by investing in China so I will continue sitting on my ass awaiting the destruction of America to join the organization in the rubble thank you very much
Tbf, Libs actually had some guts back in the days when absolute monarchies still existed.
Lenin didn’t have to deal with our Libs.
Absolute Monarchies still exist TODAY and libs just ignore them now lol.
Okay everyone I’m gonna make a confession to y’all. Years ago I used to be that lib with good intentions, but 0 good understanding of politics and if it wasn’t for the anarchist bloc that also decided to attend the mega lib marches idk if I’d be here today. We are all understandably frustrated with the world and we want more things to be done, it’s important to critique the lack of action.
But yeah I think basically if you have nothing better to do and feel confident going out there informing people, push them to the right direction, you never know what might end up happening.
This is one of the posts that got me off my ass to read Lenin. Thanks comrade!
I have a book of Lenin’s stuff a comrade from here gifted me I really need to read.
death to amerikkka
it needs to happen soon before I get too old to throw a party to celebrate it
