Hey, guys, I'm feeling pretty bummed over this and need to "vent" and ask for some advice, I guess. Thought this would be a good place, if it's not just delete the thread.
I've been an activist for a Marxist organization since I was 15, it's been 7 years. I seem to not really be able to feel and act the same way as I did before, and I'm not even sure if I'm even able to work with the Party anymore. I've not lost any of my belief in Marxism at all, it's more like I've lost faith in myself as a Marxist. Everything that the Party seems to do anymore are these "events" where you listen to hours of speeches, and all that we do is hand out leaflets and putting up posters during the time leading up to the event. No one ever comes despite just the usual guys regardless. This stuff is great and fine if you're new to it all and an actual worker, and excited, which I'm not. I'm petit-bourgeois and work a cushy job in a family business (no employees but still), how the fuck am I supposed to look at an actual worker, with a straight face, and tell him that he should spend any of his barely existent free time on coming to our boring ass rallies or attending our circlejerk leftist nerd meetings?
Am I just being a fag? Has anyone gone through something similar?
This is the way I see it mate, and I know a lot of people here are going to disagree with me and call me a faggot or whatnot. Coming from someone who also comes from a petit-bourgeois (more upper middle class really, no one in my family owns any private property) I honestly believe what would be best would be if you know any working class people you should talk to them, introduce them to the basics (using simple terms obviously) and try to hook them in from there. Then if they want to go to a talk, that's great but honestly? If someone isn't willing to go to at least one talk they probably aren't worth your time. It's great to have sympathizers and all, it raises awareness of socialism and what it actually is but for an actual revolution we don't need sympathizers, we need actual militant communists willing to die to achieve our goals.
Mason Gray
You're not wrong, I think local socialist groups just being closed speech clubs is a big problem, but the problem is that anything more than that it's so easy. How about some direct action though? Or holding your meetings in the town plaza (sounds gimmicky but then someone might actually listen to the speeches who hasn't before). It just needs some new ideas and courageous thinking.
Henry Rivera
*isn't so easy.
Because I wouldn't be surprised if any reasonably large leftist group has at least one cop member. Or maybe they just want us to think that? Perhaps there's a solution though, at the meetings hand out some kind of 'call to direct action' anonymously? I don't know.
That's the thing, I don't even know anyone anymore that hasn't spoken with me about communism more than a million times, the ones that have made up their mind are already in the party, the others don't want to hear it anymore because nobody wants to do shit, and if you do they just look at you like a retard. It's really, really exhausting, to a point where I don't even know who's right anymore.
I agree, that's what's lacking and that's the whole problem. It's super important for leftist organizations to have principles, but it's strong principles can be a very slippery slope towards stagnation
Jaxon Jones
You might want to consider taking a break for a while. You shouldn't let politics get to your head too much.
Charles Harris
that shit isn't practical, find something better to do than wasting your time in a communist party, or better yet innovate and start working on your own group if you got the knowledge. You are dumber than those workers who don't want to come to the boring meetings where the old men repeat marxist phraseology like a mantra for the 20th time at the congress. Half the shit from the books was concerning their historical situations even, if there is anything left worth of marx it is capital and maybe 2-3 other works.
Also I don't see how you being a petty bourg is relevant, if anything that gives you incentive to be on our side. Because unless you are a tard that thinks FALC is a reasonable goal a socialist government would benefit you and petit bourgs in general as it'd want to get their support by protecting them from being chewed up/bought off by global capital, the prospect of a small owner becoming a capitalist is a thing of the past, just like a worker becoming a small owner is a thing of the past. The small owners can either keep their position or degenerate into a worker, so they are naturally aligned against large capital. Instead of screeching about bourg this or bourg that you ought to use your mutual interests to build a common front. The small bourgs could stay there indefinitely and if you are in power they wouldn't influence shit because they are so dependent on large industry.
I'd even make this argument for national bourgs vs globalists unless in cases where natbourgs are parasitic.
but none of that shit MLs/Trots are doing is practical, it is all ideology.
fuck you nigger you let the fucking boons to society out of the zoos
Joseph Myers
What would be practical? What wouldn't be a waste of time? Your post is pointless if you don't provide an alternative to these things
Jack Robinson
no action is unironically better than rubbing your dick to the old man mumbling about dialectics or having some morons say ddads revisionism :DDDDD to any suggestions separating from established norms, but concretely I am a part of a small group that is basically sorting trough theory and seeing what applies and what doesn't, because a lot of communists take what the classics wrote at face value while a lot of things are wrong or simply applied to their concrete historic moment. We aren't a party or anything, I think currently such a thing would be counter productive in my country, so we are seeing what worked/works and developing new theory based on our observation.
We wanted to start a news org originally but censorship is very strong in my country so it wasn't viable, as we could only resort to interviews basically, we wouldn't be allowed to get in anywhere. We also have ideas for a socialist pragerU because there would probably be a big audience for such a thing but we need to do more statistical research (a thing we also do) before we can actually start, we will probably have to research statistics for about a month to get a few months of content.
Don't bother; just assert things without any shred of proof and make some simple visuals. That's essentially what PragerU does.
Kayden Clark
I am aware of this, we want to be correct about this unlike pragerU for example. On the off side that they are serious they still don't research their shit but invite an "expert" but we don't have the leisure, we have to do everything ourselves.
I think statistical analysis is very important and not enough socialist do it, and only have vague ideas on which they base their politics, this is horrifying to me especially if you present yourself as a political party.
Easton Williams
you're not the real boonposter
You found out that you were in a cult. I'm unironically happy for you. You're not a poor Marxist.
I don't think principles are the problem, more boring old union men who think the revolution will come from sitting in the pub having a pint and lecturing each other. Nothing against them personally or anything but the revolution must be televised, or at least seen by other people. Selling newspapers is something but you need to make people take notice. Use a loudspeaker, a megaphone, big banners, get arrested a few times and then released because the 'offences' are trivial, but just push the boundaries a bit. Get noticed. Go get a stencil and spraypaint around the place in the dead of night. Something.
Logan Butler
You are such a terrifying microcosm of a "left" retard it is stunning.
You/your group have to actually do something. I can't tell you what to do though, because I have exactly zero ideas for what "something" is. I don't know what to tell you about being a petite bourg though. People with cushy lives always piss me off.
Dylan Powell
OP here, sorry for not having replied sooner, still hope you see it. Thanks for having posted this, I read the whole thing and it fucked all my shit up, but it was incredible, I felt bad but I had to laugh at how true some of these things are and at how I hadn't noticed them
Thanks, man
Hudson Long
ML parties that don't do ML stuff are fucking shit. ML parties that do ML stuff are fucking god teir. t. fag
Mostly reads as ultra-leftist trash with some good critiques of aimless action. It seems any form of organization negates the possibility for “authentic proletarian revolution” to this author. Immediately all failures can be blamed on the group called the “AFL-CIO” or the “Bolsheviks” or “trade union”, which has “set itself apart from the real proletarian movement”. What is the real proletarian movement? Who knows, just some phantom, an agent that constitutes every worker and no identifiable group of workers. There is simultaneously a valid critique of ineffective groups and their rituals on the basis of how the means here become the ends, but it is partially carried to the failures of effective organizations like the Bolsheviks with no real line. Just a kind of hatred for groups like the Bolsheviks for “betraying the true proletarian movement” or whatever by having a hierarchy, identifiable figures of influence, a name, a set of members that didn’t include the entire set of everybody that sells their labor.
Jaxson Wright
This article is extremely terrible and without any logic. Wrestling with this article was like rimming razorwire with my brain. I am truly amazed by this work; it is a mental hazard of epic proportions. This article is useless in every way. It takes no concrete stances, describes nothing, explains nothing, and suggests nothing except basically "denounce/bully militants." This is such a disgusting handwave of action that it borders on comical. What can I even say in response to such a thorughly hysterical article? This article is just a rationality free answer to "What is wrong with the Left?" The problem, everyone, is that all successful Left movements were actually anti-worker and some sort of autonomous movement will soon spring from the ground. It is like the Rapture except it is really going to happen. If any of you read this and thought it was profound, you need to stop being so goddamn dumb. There is no other way to put this. This article makes no arguments, and it thusly shouldn't have convinced you of anything. It just throws up a strawman and does a giant hysterical song and dance. It might as well be about the immigrant menace and the dangers of mexican immigrants.
Xavier Hughes
I’ll be kind and say that I think there is an implicit critique of miming revolutionary activity based on past successful movements regardless of the conditions which could be valid. I only call it implicit because while the author says as much outright, they muddle the critique with a palpable hatred of any organizing whatsoever and seem to pathologise the desire to organize and to act as a bunch of terrible boogeymen. It’s because the militant is actually substituting religion, it’s because they’re a warped freak that insists on working too much, it’s because they want to be a paternalistic bureaucrat, it’s because they’re actually not a worker at all but a bored petit-bourgeois professional. Just a slew of insults that attach these ineffective, presumably sectarian (given the early derision about all of their particular ideologies) groups to the past ones, or to individuals like Che Guevara who wouldn’t you know, is actually just dipshit Hollywood diva and not a successful revolutionary at all! Because he isn’t the Authentic Proletarian Movement(tm)!
Ian Smith
hot
Oliver Jones
Revolution is impossible in the first world. Pretty much the most revolutionary thing a first worlder can do is just get a degree and move to the third world.
You lot are the spark that stokes the embers of your conflict. Your problem is you don't see that this struggle of yours was never ment to change things but only to provide small conflicts so the upper echelons of a permanent ruleing class in America can pull the old media slight-of-hand and have everyone looking in one direction while they enrich and fatten themselves in the other. I can't be telling you folks anything you don't already know in your heart to be true.
Your approach is also the same flawed one that the right uses. You cast yourself in a political light, and offer a better path. But the system that both the left and the right vilify already have mean grip around the hearts and minds of the people and you both will never be able to provide what the system provides for them.
I'm not a lefty or a righty. Just my opinion.
Adam Lewis
you are a dumb retard, some theory is good and some theory is bad. To come to this conclusion I sat and read 1400 pages of marx like a hermit and then read capital, most of the shit is just too historical or he predicted wrongly. Specifically capital and marxes theory of alienation he got wrong
Jaxson Lee
WHOOPS *Specifically capital and marxes theory of alienation he got wrong HE DIDN'T GET WRONG, these works are on point pretty much 90%, they are excellent and have amazing foresight considering they are still valid.
Did you just describe the Portuguese Communist Party to me?
Jonathan Bailey
Who are you? Surly a wizard, or perhaps a deamon of some long forgotten service.
I need to know why you had chosen this in response to my post?
Truly I had seen this thread and could identify with it, the disenfranchisement in ops post spoke to me so I watched the thread. Not for the same reasons as OP but the same outcome all the same.
I had thought about how to categorize myself as to identify that I am not an antagonist, the very first thing that came to mind was acceleration, because this stagnant march into this fucked up future surrounded by lemmings sweeping me along with them is the source of my disenfranchisement. To accelerate this conflict, to stoke the embers into flames, will wake up the the masses and you will get the people to start paying attention…
I feel strongly about the nature of people and politics but also game theory and how all side are playing a loosing game, the systems game.
After the events of the past 24 or so hours in my life and this thread I felt compelled to share my opinion, something I rarely do. And in response, a gem, which I am still consuming.
Please, to further my own understanding, why did you post that link. Share your reasoning with me and I will share my thoughts with you.
Also, I don't believe in coincidence.
Evan Lee
Anyone who has tried to join a socialist organization has had this experience. The problem is these groups employ 20th century tactics in the 21st century where they are totally ineffective at capturing attention or energizing the proletariat. I'm not clever enough to come up with a solution unfortunately, we need some kind of post-modern overhaul of the outdated socialist activist tactics of the 20th century, they just don't work anymore, at least not in the first world.
Ethan Gomez
speeches, leaflets and posters are ineffective
Lucas Peterson
The internet kind of replaced all of those things. Youtube videos, podcasts and memes are infinitely more effective than speeches when it comes to reaching a modern audience.
