My experience in left-wing movements has made me realize that the biggest problems the Left has, from the inside, are the three big As: academics, artists, and adolescents.
From youthful zeal that will almost never be put to good use, embarrassing "critical" art that makes regular people puke, silly pseudo-bohemian lifestyles, and the pussyfication of the entire movement that happens when academics take over the discourse, these three groups are basically the conducting wires of all bad and self-destructive leftist tendencies: identity politics, abstentionism, romantic pseudo-revolutionism, puritanism, etc.
These are the people that think party work is boring and unglamorous, and they want instead things that are energetic and romantic, like a dumb occupation of a park. They think going into parliaments and playing the game of politics is some type of moral betrayal, and prefer never to compromise their principles by never implementing them in real life and, therefore, dealing with the imperfections of real life. That Socialism is not something that should be approached as a scientific methodology, but a general, vague "feeling" of inclusion, of social justice, and equality, that makes them exploitable by any group of resentful individuals crying injustice. Every idiotic trend among us starts with them.
We need to bring back Engels' attitude towards them:
A Worker's party is a worker's party. Sure anyone can join and help, but their presence en masse tends to be inversely proportional to the presence of actual, regular, working people.
so Zig Forums Eks DEE Fully agreed. I feel that youthful zeal could really get the movement places but none of them have the balls
Colton Butler
(me) Having said that, the downfall of the youth is their reliance on their parents (early on) and the fact no one takes them seriously. That and lack of good theory that makes them think "communism is about sharing all the wealth and super high taxes!"
Tyler Johnson
U forgot ur shiposting flag
Juan Ward
He left his brainlet flag on while flase-flagging you mean.
Aaron Phillips
OP i agree completely
Connor Jones
Agreed. The faggots that dye their hair and rant about "muh body positive feminism", "this is what a real feminist looks like", "muh queer socialist revolution", "let's live in massive communes and smell each others farts", "muh multicultural melting pot", "muh tolerant society" are the fucking worst.
leftpol split because they got tired of being banned for not defending Iranian pogroms. has nothing to do with youth.
Jeremiah Robinson
Never seen this problem before other than from parties who weren't threat to capital to begin with. Your post sounds very much like romanticizing the proletariat, while exaggerating the negative internal tendencies which are miniscule compared to external forces of capital and propaganda that are seeking to protect the hegemony of capital…….
And dont forget the jews that signup to be mods on all popular forums to ban anyone that bads mouth the yid bolshevik machine.
USER WAS BANNED BY LEFTYPOL MOD FOR NAMING THE CHOSEN(here's what a real ban looks like, faggot)
Anthony Ramirez
Easier said than done. The problem with the three groups identified is that they have more free time and energy to spend on politics. The average prole come home tired after a full workday and generally wants to be left alone, which is of course a feature, not a bug.
At any length, the real problem is neither of the three groups; but a fourth one: the professional politicians and activists.
Zachary Allen
Bullshit filled with buzzwords. Why do I have a feeling you belong in one of the three groups you want to alienate to make yourself feel better?
Adrian Williams
Btw I know it's not the main point you were making, but "critical art" is cringy as fuck in 90% of cases, can we all agree to keep art and politics somewhat separate please
Aaron Russell
Zig Forumstards are literally more rabidly anti-Iran than Zionist ideologues at this point
Benjamin Fisher
screenshots of stfu. supporting the socialists is the most pro-iranian position there is.
Lucas Martinez
What? Many great pieces of art is political, what the h*ck are you on about……?
Levi Lee
Pogrom implies ethnic cleansing. Prove that Iran is doing such a thing of shut up
Carter Mitchell
*or
Cameron Edwards
Strawmanning: The Highest stage of Iran-defense.
Jacob Cooper
Guess your still mad about that failed liberal color revolution attempt that Trump supported just like Kurdistan
I didn't see anything in that video supporting imperialism? At best you might be able to argue shitting on Assad is pro-imperialist, but Assad is actually a shithead albeit the least awful option for Syria.
Benjamin Carter
Artist here: the art world is a lot better right now than it has been, just don't go to porky's art fairs.
Benjamin Lopez
So basically the problem are lazy western gluttons not wanting to rock the boat?
When the imperialist exploits are too good.
Sebastian Evans
Holy shit why did I have to complete the captcha like 10 times?
Andrew Nguyen
I would say that wishing that counting on Uncle Sam's 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧democracy🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧 promotion efforts in the ME and then getting disappointed is an example of tacit support for imperialism. I mean hot damn you would have been called a cruise missile liberal (even by liberals) in the Bush years for that sort of attitude and now that type of trash has bled into the radical left.
I just can't believe how unbelievably naive you have to be to believe in the US government's promises. This is the country that supportsarms/ 73% of the world's dictatorships while preaching about democracy.
Nicholas Sullivan
That user was right when he said you people see Socialism as cheering for the Red team against the Blu team.
btw, all of those posts (relating to imperialism) were made by Christcom-user false flagging. he got banned with a note attached to his posts telling him to cut it out.
obviously what we need are a bunch of uneducated, soap opera watching, 4 legged farts to lead the struggle
David Thomas
I'm somewhere in the middle of these extremes tbh.
I think catering to Trumptards is a waste of time, but so is listening to SJW feminists.
I didn't realize how bad women were until I joined Tinder as an incel, and it was like, whoah, now I kind of understand where Zig Forums is coming from.
However, I only "listen" to Zig Forums when I'm feeling angry and depressed. Deep down I know racism is pointless and hating people is counterproductive and communism would benefit me overall.
David Carter
Zig Forums split because they're pseudo leftist cucks that take getting banned from a forum as a serious personal attack
The problem is not with the left itself, it is with the mainstream cultural attitudes toward the left. These kids are lying out of their asses when they say they care about theory and praxis and other boring grown up stuff, all they want to do is impress their peers and act out in public. None of them even have cursory knowledge of Marxism or anarchism or any other ism relevant to the far left. In fact, many of them believe the mythical horseshit told to them by their neoconservative boomer parents–and actually liked what they heard. It's why rightards say people "grow out" of leftism.
And after someone actually does do the boring party work which doesn't achieve anything, Zig Forums will berate them for spending a decade of their youth expecting things to be better than when they started.
Jason Brooks
Only if they're Trots.
Lincoln Hill
That's pretty spot on, and explains why all their dumb opinions never contain a Socialist analysis, only banalities repeated with some Marxist-sounding lingo.
Brayden Moore
Well, mass movements are supposed to be "mass" movements. A guy taking steps towards organization and serious political engagement is doing the right thing, but if no one follows him it won't work.
That still doesn't mean his method was flawed, only that he misread the culture, the ethics, the motivations, the mindset and the potential of the left-wing people that surround him. It happens to the best of us.
Lucas Kelly
So who's doing it right then?
Daniel Fisher
I am an active member of a socdem party. Last time I was at a congress, one of the young women (I think somewhere in her 20s) who was a national board member took to the stage and proudly announced that "NO MEN" had shown interest in a position that was open on the board.
There were a few claps, but mostly people around me (including women) scoffing at how ridiculous it was, but not speaking out against it. Just murmuring between one another how dumb it was.
This is one of the bigger problems the modern left has. Not because a lot of it's volunteers and members are so stupid, but because young people who are obsessed with identity politics tend to be zealous and ambitious, which causes them to get into key positions.
Cameron Wright
I'm an artist too, and a lot of this attitude
is because people assume art has to follow the same principles as a product, how useful is it to you in terms of the pleasure it gives you or how entertaining it is, instead of what thoughts it can provoke . How well it conforms to established, usually conservative ideas of good aesthetics.
I am not saying that there isn't bad art, because there is a shit ton of crappy art. And the way the gallery system is commercialized it incentivizes bad art. As long as there is a market for it, they are going to put it in the gallery. There is also a huge loop you have to be in in order to get shown , because everyone pretty much knows each other, and only wants to show their friends, unless you are lucky enough to break through.
80% of academics are useful tools of the system. Their job is to continuously recreate the conditions for the system to be able to function – what the fuck were you expecting? This shouldn't discourage us from using the 'neutral' 15% and outright allies of ours the last remaining 5% is.
I personally know several self-proclaimed radical-type STEM lords who are huge on idpol, white guilt, le russia narrative, etc. You seem to be unable to distinguish your personal prejudice and ignorance from how the world is, in this regard you are no better than a poltard, OP.
Oh, yeah, and the road to the revolution needs artists more than stemfags. Post-rev, it's a different pic. Learn our history and study our past experience before you make such hasty and stupid claims.
Elaborate please. The revolution needs more obfuscation than pragmatism? It needs more graphic designers than engineers?
Like I understand that STEM people are incredibly reactionary, often fascist, because of the nature of their pedantic work - but they are still immensely useful if they ARE on our side.
Charles Baker
This raises the question though, who should be getting paid a living to make art? Everyone who wants to? That wouldn't make sense, as you allowed that bad art exists. If not decided by the market, surely we should expect that artists who are paid and can live off the labour of others, produce art that is desired by those others?
Jose Cooper
Being that "art" nowadays is normally produced by the same demographic of people - petty booj urbanites - what can you reasonably infer out of any of that "art" that couldn't be derived from understanding the people who made it.
Austin Wilson
Communists always adapt their politics to the present circumstances. The situation and hence our tasks before the revolution are different than after. You can show up your ass the fact that you can design a bridge, write and run simulations of a planned cybernetic economy, etc. as far as our politics is concerned before the revolution. Our main task now is to gather the broadest base of support possible through agitation, propaganda, literature, movies, posters, design, and so on.
Art proper deals with how different representational modes of the world as it is can be declared as legitimate. Art makes people look at everyday phenomena in a completely different light, makes them able to talk about our world differently, to dare to imagine an alternative. (Obviously I'm not talking about your average petty bourg pomo exhibition.)
STEM people are incredibly useful, for sure, but more in the 'building socialism' department post-rev, and not in the 'making people wanting to kill porky' department pre-rev.
Where exactly are the intellectuals? The more people talk about these intellectuals the more I think this is deepseated romanticizing of the ruling class/it's tools. Name some intellectuals, please, and explain how they are helpful to the socialist movement.
You're completely right, and the people disagreeing with you are disagreeing with Engels, yet I guarantee they will turn around and scarf his cock in the next thread.
You act like art is going to meaningfully convince people to be Socialists! You're fucking deluded dude. Every Socialist revolution has had everything to credit to pragmatic, real action, not the magic of art causing all the proletariat to join hands against the bourgeois. You ascribe a legitimately magical character to art, when it is just something for people to interpret.
Sebastian Parker
Building socialism immediately after a revolution is much more important than the revolution itself, saying otherwise exposes a carnality that you derive from socialism - that it's about indulging in the cathartic rather than making something better.
You should always have a shelter ready when burning down your own. I know that the building process wouldn't happen without the revolution itself, but a revolution is ultimately pointless if after it there's nothing.
Austin Baker
Citizen journalism and independent journalism are one possible platform to achieve just that.
Also the masses are not something to be worked over by carefully crafted propaganda to manufacture consent, as the bourgeois theorists might think in their smug superior attitude. Every proletarian knows what he is living in through daily practice and needs to be distracted by constant stream of propaganda.
The emotion of resentment, hate, resignation, sadness, all those caused by dehumanizing effects of capitalist production are there. People need to be shown the structure of society and economy, so they can tear it down and rebuild it with their hands. Don't forget that you and me are too also these people, not somebody removed from society, standing separately.
citizen journalism Communists, revolutionaries don't really identify with citizenship, really, since they don't think that the gov. is legitimate. >independent journalism Nothing is independent, neutral, purely objective in the sphere of politics. Ideology is a war waged between two armies: proletariat and bourgeois. Call me when you were able to detect a third one or simply a neutral one.
In any case, journalism is but one battlefield of culture, still under the typical duties of what is called 'humanities'. It is a truly post-modern sight when "journalists" narcissistically proclaim to be "independent" or "independently founded hence objective" and "not doing propaganda like the rest of them." Communists at least have the balls to call what they to what it is: agitational propaganda work. Grow the fuck up already.
Revolutionaries do the opposite of "manufacturing consent," Chumpsy. Oh, those bourgeois theorists? They do science and facts, while the rest of those dirties down there just manipulate the masses. Guess I'm with the latter group of rednecks, h'yuck, Chumpsy.
Have you ever had a single conversation with like… people?
Yes, professor, all we need to do is to show facts to them proles and they'll figure out the rest. Everything else is just Machiavellian evil doings.
A ∩ B = Ø
Ayden Allen
The point of my post was showing that people in STEM are more useful to socialism than artists.
Jonathan Campbell
The point of my post was showing that you are an idiot.
lmao as if the post is calling for any specific profession to be outright banned from left-wing movements
How you feel about the people you know is irrelevant.
What makes a class or a segment society a potential revolutionary one is their position over the productive forces of society, not what a young leftist thinks of them as individuals, and if a potentially revolutionary class happens to hold political views that do not immediately match our own, we don't start throwing 150 years of Marxist analysis down the drain and make artists the new "revolutionary class", we adjust our rhetoric, our tactics, our propaganda according to the present necessities and struggles of the working-class. Otherwise we're left with the same depth of analysis as people who think blue-collar workers are too racist or conservative to be good material for a left-wing movements. This is secondary, historically conditioned patterns of production is primary.
And of course, STEM people are part of that. Part of. No one brought them up specifically before you, which happens when people slip and let their insecurities speak. But the question is that all active, working proletariat in the majority of western countries, from the lower to the highest ranks in terms of pay grade, tend not to display Socialist or leftist views. According to your approach we should abandon tell and call for musicians to make the revolution, but this is not what a Marxist approach would lead to. A Marxist approach concerns itself with the production of commodities and the instruments of labour, and to SEIZE them we must first appeal to people who USE them on a daily basis. If you don't like them as personalities, user, that is too bad (and most certainly reciprocal), but we need them. And when these people tend not to show no concern for Left-wing causes, and the academia or the theater actors tend to, that is a problem. It becomes a huge problem when this trend last generations, to the point where the message, rites, customs and demands of Left-wing movements become shaped by the latter and not by proletarian organizations engaged in proletarian struggles, and when you start hearing people dismiss the working class because they're problematic or reactionary, it becomes a problem that requires a radical solution in terms of demographic shifts. This is what you're debating here. This isn't about banning 100% of academics or about the darn STEM kids that mocked you on 4chan the other day, so chill.
Adrian Butler
Haha, no, it doesn't. We need the proletariat, which contrary to what neophytes think, doesn't mean low-pay workers with their faces covered with coal. It means wage-earning workers in the private sector producing surplus value in the process of commodity production. This means the STEM people you dislike for their role in production are ten times more important than artists who, at the end of the day, are not engaged in capitalist production.
Or, as Engels himself said in a letter to the Congress of Socialist Students, in the 90s:
We don't need to take over the political instruments alone and THEN worry about organizing production along socialist lines, we need to take over the instruments and the means of work. In developed countries in particular, this critically includes "stemfags", as much as this must hurt you.
Levi Miller
Who said anything about artists being the "next revolutionary class"? Reading comprehension is sure hard around 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧some parts.🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
Luke Reed
We're talking about demands of revolution, I explained to you what they are. Now go play somewhere else.
Joshua Green
What's wrong, OP? You don't think weaponizing identity politics was a good idea for the collective solidarity of the left? Fucking misogynist
Have you ever been around STEM people? There's a sizable minority of CompSci majors that are incel polacks but no one else gives a shit. Everyone in the genetics lab I was at was pretty left, it's hard to spread white supremacy nonsense when you're surrounded by people with PhD's from all over the world who can spot pseudoscience from a mile a way. I think a lot of anons on this board fall for the STEMlord meme a bit too hard.
Ryan Sanchez
Humanities majors who take pride in their ignorance, user. Cue butthurt responses to words unwritten in this post from pepole who read between the lines too hard.
Cooper Morales
I was actually studying Aeronautical Engineering albeit never completed it. I just feel that those in STEM are a lot more cold and reserved than people in other studies.
Matthew Parker
Thats a social phenomenon, if education wasnt shit and people other than just quiet focused nerds learned that math is actually fun it wouldnt be like that. Its the very same phenomenon that keeps said nerds away from humanities, and limits them if they can't realize engineering is art and cant relate their ideology and aesthetics as they pertain to program architecture or how a machine should be designed to anything outside. Quiet, reserverd nerd isnt bad in any way though and isn't "reactionary", and like user said they generally aren't any more than the baseline. its not called socialism because its for insufferable social butterflies or something.
Asher Johnson
...
Easton Allen
kids under 18 have spent their entire lives growing up in a state of war with the middle east, over half their lives in the worst economic conditions since 1929, with parents whose wages shrink year after year, and older siblings living at home well into their adulthood because they crushed beneath tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans for degrees they were told to get which are no longer worth anything
you're a dipshit
Asher Perry
the proletariat does exactly include low-pay workers with their faces covered in coal. "proletariat" comes from ancient latin and means the same as in in ancient rome: under class, lower class i.e. people who don't have wealth and no political influence.
this is Zig Forums tier delusion. under capitalism every person who sells something (includes criminals/mafia), who is either a worker working in the private sector, unemployed or a private "entrepreneur" and who is not working for a state owned entity is engaged in capitalist production. infact even people who work for the state might actually work for capitalists remotely, e.g. politicians and clerks who sell their vote and political influence to oligarchs or corporations/shareholders.
Jeremiah Rogers
Noone should be paid a living to make art. Work hours in general should just be reduced in order to accomodate for creative endeavors (and well, because there's no point in labor that doesn't create value)
Liam Hernandez
Zig Forums is reaching Zig Forums levels of idiocy
Ian Rodriguez
I don't entirely disagree, but if all it takes to destroy the Left is a bunch of limp wristed art school brats who read Judith Butler and dye their hair unnatural colors, then I don't know if the Left was worth much to begin with. I'm not saying I have all the answers, but the Left has a bad habit of shifting blame onto outside forces, COINTELpro, Revisionists, Opportunists, Adventurists, Utopians, you name it. Maybe our time would be better spent trying to figure out why it's so monumentally easy for our movements to get co-opted and subverted, i.e. what are the internal flaws already inherent to how we organize, since having a movement where everyone just acts the exact way you want them too is pretty unlikely as an alternative.
To be fair, the far-right has the same problems we do at this point. The modern state has enormous powers of surveillance. Even non-state entities like major corporations have accumulated so much wealth relative to ordinary people it would be easy for them to hire agents provocateurs to infiltrate and disrupt left-wing organizations, which I'm sure they already do. Membership organizations are outdated. Collecting everyone's information simply makes it easy for the government or some anti-labor force to steal and coopt.
It all comes down to the maturity of political forces involved as well as the resources available to our enemies. This is why my own recommended strategy is to avoid diluting the labor movement with idpol and attempt to concentrate our forces on developing an equally mature political program and plan of action which remains realistic about when, how, and where we can actually win struggles against capitalism.
Christopher Moore
this but unironically
Jace Nelson
The biggest problem the Left has is retards like OP who refuse to read Marx and still believe that if you are not a manual labourer in Manchester you are not a worker.
Ryan Bailey
No one said that
Isaac Brown
After getting banned the only two options are: 1) wait days, weeks, months until you're unbanned or 2) find a new place to continue discussion.
What would you do?
Aiden Perry
I'd probably stop supporting proxies of US imperialism but that's just me
Nothing wrong with literacy, but raising yourself above others for having read alienates them. Nothing wrong with art, but thinking it's a viable way of spreading theory is stupid. Nothing wrong with youth, but acting like a stereotype of a kiddie just makes you annoying.
Often it's not made accessible, or is political in a really roundabout way.
Because, you know, a group of people on an unmoderated board all have the same ideology. I thought only Zig Forums was able to make mistakes like that against us.
You're expecting people to change beliefs because they're getting banned for them? What kind of kiddie are you to put your desire to belong above the integrity of your beliefs?
Nah that's a load of shite. A good manager knows to ask questions and how to learn from those he has to serve. It's a mutually beneficial process. So while the lads might learn something, they wouldn't be able to do so without the instructor learning from them.
Who the fuck on the shop floor talks about privilege? You know, I shthink thish might shjussht be a very exshagerated anecdote.
Ethan Green
A bunch of Maoist idiots that made all of our work that much fucking harder. When they went to train with the PLO they would insist on doing stupid shit like sunbathe on the rooftops naked, as Europeans back then were wont to do, both alienating themselves culturally from the actually reactionary population and guerrillas in Palestine, AND paint themselves as a giant fucking target for Mossad and the European intelligence services.
Then the stunts they pulled gave the bourgeoisie in the state apparatus the political legitimacy to do things like militarize the police; over the span of a decade Barney Fife would turn into Judge Dredd, while at the same time crackdowns would happen like the Iranian Revolution, the Breaking of the PATCO strike, the killing of Aldo Moro, the destruction of the Allende government, and the laying the foundation of the financialization of the world economy, which puts us into the situation of having to find a way to geographically target and immobilize the Capitalists without destroying the economy: right now financialization is holding us by the proverbial balls, and we cant do a thing about our local economies without getting out from under the global finance regimes, with all the trade treaties and NGOs involved
Carter Lewis
i think it's just a story entirely made up just to create an image of this as a plausible scenario and giving his argument more weight it's pretty retarded to actually believe any of his little bed time stories he tells people to put them asleep so they don't question whatever lesson he's trying to convey with them really a cheap but effective rhetorical trick to use on weak minded gullible people you can credit him for being intelligent to effectively use rhetoric tricks like that, but usually he's just talking dumb shit, it's just hard to make his fanboys see behind this facade he created his real strength is manipulation
you're not slowly becoming retarded, you're already there, as demonstrated by your reading comprehension i pity you, if it wasn't for capitalism we could euthanize you and put you to sleep peacefully or just keep you busy with arts and craft therapy
