When does the fucking fighting start, though? It’s like I get people on board then they kinda realise this solidarity shit is effort and go back to business as usual. It’s exhausting and I’m not even at the tip of the spear.
People will fight not when they are sufficiently hopeless but when fighting can convincingly be a source of hope. Right now, with the level of popular leftist organization, a fight against the American state would be a one-way bloodbath where the militarized police forces slaughter and imprison the small revolutionary opposition without much difficulty. Everybody recognizes this consciously or intuitively. Only a larger, better organized movement can change that equation.
However, this constant desire for combat isn’t, I think, particularly like to be how a revolution in the US plays out. We are not in the midst of a decolonial civil war like China or Vietnam, where the Communists rise as the most capable and dedicated combatants in an already open state of warfare. An actual revolution in the US is probably going to look much more like the Russian Revolution - a series of persistent, disruptive, intensive, and disciplined strikes and protests that cripple the functioning of the state until it collapses and the revolutionaries can step in an declare a new state in its place - there was no long and intensive period of combat during either the February or October revolutions. Most governments that topple look more like that - see Bangladesh as a recent example, though there was no one ready to push the revolutionary situation there to completion.
So our responsibilities right now:
-
Build a vanguard party of the sort that Stalin describes in this chapter of Foundations of Leninism. That’s basically the bible for
. -
Seize on every systemic crisis to promote revolutionary, socialist, and working class consciousness through high-quality propaganda, cogent analysis, and practical organizational assistance to the people.
-
Enter into existing working class organization to radicalize or replace the leadership, as needed; where organization doesn’t exist, create it. I’m talking unions, cooperatives, neighborhood groups, minority rights and defense organizations, single-issue activist bodies, etc.
-
Constantly develop our individual theoretical and historical knowledge and our organizational skillset as part of a revolutionary organization.
-
Engage in elections firmly outside of and in opposition to both capitalist parties as a vehicle for building mass organization and consciousness. Do not expect to win, because that is not the goal.
-
Imho you need conscription first. That’s why they’d be insane to actually invade Venezuela
Wait until the AI bubble pops and the economy truly crashes. When people lose their livelihoods in droves and the government gives more bailouts to the rich. Is it gonna be The Revolution™? Who knows, but I expect there’s gonna be fighting.
We are still in the bezzle zone
I read that the top 10% of US consumers are doing 50% of the consumer spending dude. We’re at like “let them eat AI generated cake” levels.
The cake is AI
the cake is Alie
Do you sometimes think the U.S. has completely cracked the code on how to prevent a revolution or even mass dissent? I’m almost morbidly curious to see how far they can take it, or rather if it’s even possible to take any further now. Maybe public state-enforced child sacrifices?
Even if they wanted to, no one knows how to dissent without shooting up a walmart or a pharmacy
I think geography and manufactured consensus through mass media play a significant role in this. Americans are very spread out across the country and most people view the world around them through carefully crafted narratives presented to them through social media and traditional news outlets.
The majority of the population is living in the matrix so to speak. Multiple matrices, depending on their political affiliation and choice of media consumption echo chambers.
maybe internet media makes it easier for people to build communities across a wider area instead of in their local areas, and thats exactly why communists can amass thousands online but are often alone on the ground.
Online orgs need to pick a single location to move their members to so that they do local organizing in the same place and concentrate their forces
We need an antifa HQ for real
No, they need to funnel people into existing organizations wherever their audience is. They need to make themselves extensions of and recruitment tools for the organizations that are already working across the country.
To answer genuinely, because an internet following is not a sufficiently coherent or trustworthy basis to physically relocate and consolidate with the objective of doing political organizing. You won’t get enough commitment from most people and you’re probably gonna get some real weirdos who do commit. It is a much more productive use of time to get those people into the local branch of a vanguard party. Even starting a branch is far less effort and disruption than moving to who-knows-where to organize. Plus, simply pulling together random internet volunteers, even if you could pull it off, would achieve… what? If they’re moving to a big city, they will be too few to make any difference. If they’re moving to a small town, that’s just starting a commune.
Now, if people are willing to move for political organizing purposes, they should do so in an organized fashion. A Marxist-Leninist party might call for experienced and trustworthy members to move across the country in order to play a role in a union organizing effort where their particular skillset and discipline would be useful. They can act as one reliable piece of a complex plan rather than a few disorganized folks who want to get started from too high a level without an organizational basis.
In that case, I hope orgs do that. I could imagine a coordinated concentration of cadre in one place to be able to turn the local tide and recruit in the process.
Essentially I’m arguing to convert a large sparse online org into a dense organized local org, in whatever ways the material conditions demands that it happens
public state-enforced child sacrifices
What if I were to suggest…
The west is Omelas, but the society is still shit.
Instead of beating up a kid in the basement, it’s mass shootings every other week.
Also they’re probably beating up kids anyway, why not both!?
kind of incredible that most people are just sitting back and taking it.
the slop is enough
But it’s going to get harder to get. The free is getting so ad-choked it’s difficult to watch. And the paid stuff is getting more expensive and consolidating more and more (Paramount is trying to buy Warner Bothers and HBO, Netflix raises their prices every 6 months, they’re all cracking down on password sharing, etc.)
They’re forgetting both the bread and circuses part.
… paid stuff…? ads …?!
brother you are doing it all wrong!
Oh right, I almost forgot about the 🏴☠️🦜
If they ever figure out a way to stop all that, we’re getting a revolution for sure lol.
Complete atomisation of a society is a hell if a drug. I say to comrades all the time, communists used to have the challenge of organising the community, our generation of commies has the additional step of actually creating a community to organise.
On the plus side, the task of creating a community comes with the opportunity to build it in our image, encoding our values into it’s foundations
I guess what’s tripping me up is that if there are people so disaffected by society that they are willing to murder children because 4chan told them it’s cool, why is there not at least a higher prevalence of individuals who are willing to do the same thing to bankers, executives, politicians, etc.? I mean obviously there’s one or two big ones here and there, but the ratio is WAY off, and it’s not like people don’t know who’s fucking everything up, even if some people have been pointed the wrong way by propaganda, there’s still surely at the least hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of Americans who are able to see the past the veil of red vs. blue nonsense to the glaring source of the problem.
It’s not the same thing as building up a community or movement, I’m just amazed that we have such an excess of mass shootings but only one person who actually deserves it gets blasted, what, once every several years, if that?
Well honestly we have had two in the last two years, which is a better ratio than it has been.
Where’s the modern day class traitors, who use their positions to lead the masses, the ones who funnel their wealth towards an alternative? I’ve known several wealthy libs in the West and most of them are consistently sad, they spend their life on consumption, these people could fix an issue I’ve been dealing with for more then a decade and it’d cost them less than one of their expensive bottles of Liquor. I’m not even asking for handouts. I’ve offered to help fix up their stuff that’s been broken for decades, because they don’t care for maintenance, but they’d rather buy another sugoiii katana desu. Not that any of them talk to me anymore, because they’d rather live in peaceful dreams.
Ya we need some modern day Engels or Simone Bolivar’s. I think Castro might have been one, too.
Working on it
it’s pretty easy to believe honestly. americans are miserable assholes who hate others and themselves, they’d rather die than talk to each other enough to organize a real resistance against capital
I only disagree that they hate themselves. I wish those egomaniacal walking piles of cancer cells hated themselves more.
you sound like an asshole yourself, sir.
OK, but they’re right.
There is only useless protests, book clubs and adventurism
Lenin started off as a member of a book club. Americans are so politically brain dead that honestly reading groups are about the level they are at. It would be a huge achievement just to get most to read a book or engage with any kind of working class theory.
But yes you need more than a book club. But most Americans aren’t even at THAT level yet.
A synthesis of those things together is revolutionary praxis tho
Bacon is vegan.
