American Socialism

lole

Shame on you. Why not try recruiting formers with shekeldom similar to the street beat bottomfags in LE? You're basically there…here..so why not?

Third Worldism is a Maoist-derived mode of though.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that this guy glows in the dark.

because every party here fucking sucks ass

PSL seems okay but I was in SPUSA for a couple years and to call it a joke would be giving them way too much credit, it's a fucking cesspit. The new standout orgs are Marxist Center and For-The-People. Both are totally uninvolved in electoral politics, both focus on base building with serve-the-people programs, both forego petty 20th century factionalism for a wide net that basically any revolutionary socialist can fit under. Marxist Center had 2,000 people after 2 months of existing, which is about as much as SPUSA's national membership despite having existed since the 70s (or 1910s if you believe their line about being the legitemate successor to SPA). The IWW and New Afrikan Black Panther Party are also great, just smaller and with less infrastructure than Marxist Center or For-The-People as far as I can tell. Either way, if you're a burger you have good options:

Personally I recommend Marxist Center but all are great and I'm going to join a couple others when I get the chance.

Lemme quote wikipedia's page on labor federation competition
Via Wikipedia page on labor competiton

succdems, not socialists

Was Khrushchev right to call Mao a Trot?

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To be honest I'm somewhat terrified that joining the IWW would affect my future job prospects. Given I want to move into a more stable household, outside of that, I try to talk about socialism with my friends when I get the chance.

Yeah, I see where your coming from. Luckily it is growing quickly, maybe when it gets big enough you'll be safe under the logic of
"you can't fire ALL of us"

Any stats on the growth of IWW or just obvious that it's growing?

Nice history, but today they're too small and decentralized. I'd join if I knew my local branch was good.
Pretty sure they don't exist anymore.
Pseudo-Trots. Every cringey Left Twitter account is a member too.
Good website (especially for Trots) except for all the sexual assault apologia.
More Trots, with all the rapeyness of the SEP but without the anti-imperialism.
If I wanted to be a succdem I'd join the Democrat Cops of America, at least they've gotten some people elected.
Same as SPUSA.

I don't know too much about them, but are they really as big as you say?
They seem to have nice politics but they also seem tiny.
Only exist in prisons as far as I can tell, which is fine but I have no interest in ever going there.

They just formed in February and already have 2k members spread out across the country. Basically it's a central organization made to organize a dozen or so seperate but similar serve-the-people city specific socialist orgs. Our Philly branch has organized Tenants Union that is now a legitemate force in the city, as well as English Second Language classes for immigrant workers and their kids, both of which are being imitated across the country, I believe the bigger branches are in Kentucky, Kansas, and Colorado Springs. FTP is a bit smaller as far as I can tell but is doing similar stuff, with a bit more of a Maoist element to it afaik but basically similar and nonsectarian, mostly in St. Louis, Atlantic City and I believe Alabama. NABPP has started doing work in Atlantic City but you're right that they're almost exclusively a prison org for now.

None of these orgs are especially big, but having shopped around for about five years now and seeing the whole range of insular impotence, Trotskyist microparty redundancy, resigned socdems, cultish Maoists, etc etc, these new ones are much, much better. They have a lot of momentum and are focusing on actual base-building and the construction of independent proletarian infrastructure, which is just fucking common sense for a socialist organization to do but it took major political shake-ups, new blood, and socialism coming back into public view again. I dont mean to disparage the comrades that have been doing good work for decades, god bless them I dont know how they did it, but they did it in spite of the sad state of late 20th century American commie fashion clubs and cults LARPing as revolutionary politics.

Also the rate of growth of these new orgs and the involvement of their members is very impressive compared to SPUSA/ISO/SA/PSL. They may have similarly small membership but they've gathered it in a much smaller amount of time whereas these other "parties" have been around for like half a century and struggle to retain a couple hundred members.

Basically I'm just saying they might not be much to look at now but I think these are the groups worth investing time and energy in because compared to the others they have much more momentum and vitality.

regenerationmag.org/a-new-socialist-org-is-born-a-report-on-the-marxist-center-conference-2/

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regenerationmag.org/base-building-activist-networking-or-organizing-the-unorganized/

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This. It's not going to happen.

So why was this thread anchored? Salty Trot/America-hating mods, or just autistic screeching about discussing actual organizing instead of impotent activism or internet shitposting?

No idea, maybe they thought it should go in American politics general? Either way fucking stupid

this thread's allowed

Source? Did he really say that?

Why, OP? I've asked myself this question many times before, and every time, I've gotten one answer in response; cultural warfare. Not cultural warfare between cultures, but cultural warfare in our own culture. We are barely encouraged to learn other languages (among other measures to limit our exposure to other systems than capitalism), we are raised in an extreme grind culture that considers anyone left of center "weak" or some bullshit like that, we are told over and over that libs are "radical leftists" by our cucked two-party politicians, we are told over and over bullshit about how "teh ruskies and teh chinkz r gonna eat ur first born chaild!!1 nyurrr they hate freedom also isis wantz 2 cut muh towerz down", we are fed serving after serving of bullshit on how capitalism is the best system ever, we are told that communism killed more than 95 million people since its inception even though capitalism has killed more than 100 million just in the last five years (1.6 billion since its inception in Great Britain), etc… We aren't simply stupid, we're being groomed and brainwashed from childhood onward to believe that we are living in the best place in the world, and if we can't afford the cost of life with three fucking jobs, it's all our fault.

Considering the bloke was actually there and interviewed Lenin…

"When fascism comes to America, it'll be a cross wrapped in the flag. "

For Christ's sake, left(y)pol/sters! Stop nagging America into socialism! It's never gonna happen. Most Americans are eternally spooked into the "get rich or die trying"/"rags to riches" mantra. Even if they learned the difference between (neo)liberalism and socialism, most would reject it because they all want to be the god-boss of their business.

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This quiz kinda sucks when it comes to actually labelling doomers. I'm probably better at socializing than most normies are, and more idealistic than they are, but my depression is overwhelming and the mask comes off when i'm not around anyone.

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Why do people think Maoist-Third Worldists say first worlders shouldn't do anything? M-TW is about re-prioritizing, not "doing nothing".

Third worldist don't advocate "doing nothing" in the first world but doing nothing is certainly preferable to promoting imperialist social democracy (i.e. social democracy in the first world.)

Who is advocating social democracy?

rashidmod.com/?p=1125

Third Worldists need to read Rashid. Your analysis is pathetic.

Literally who?

One of the most committe and consistent revolutionaries in the US right now. He has been in prison since he was 18 on drug charges and has been organizing behind bars since. He was moved from prison to prison because he kept organizing and leading strikes. He was placed in a cell block with only the Aryan Brotherhood and he started organizing them too. He's been in solitary for like a decade now. He's a major figure in the IWOC, the IWW's prison branch, and is the Minister of Defense of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party. Everyone should be reading him.

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Founder of a prison org based on the black Panthers and one of the IWW's most valuable members. He's been trying to unionize prisoners for years, he's convinced hardened gangsters and even neo-Nazis to see the light, and that's why the guards been torturing him and censoring his work then transferring him off to another prison for more of the same cruel and unusual bullshit.

There seems to be three different people who trend towards anti-capitalistism in the global left.

The first, understandably, is the third world which has felt the worst of American Imperialism.

The second, are rather hypocritical Europeans who adopt an anti-capitalist attitude in part out of jealousy of America supplanting Europe's old place in the sun. Thus they'll make long lists detailing America's "crimes" and pretend like they weren't just as guilty of them in the past.

The third, and perhaps strangest, are Americans themselves who feel socially isolated/alienated from wider American culture, and so respond with a nihilistic lashing out against their own countrymen. It's the type of people who listened to Green Day's "American Idiot" unironically and are what Orwell would call "Trans-nationalists"

Of the latter two, you see an annoying pattern of accusations:

All of these things supposedly making the socialist project in America impossible. To which I counter that if their entire argument is based off the worst interpretation of stereotypes, it's no wonder the left finds itself in such dire straits today.

There's no great cultural impetus that makes Socialism impossible in the United States. Such an idea is inherently stupid, and I suspect based off some convoluted relationship that the propagators of this idea had with their parents–maybe they were evangelical protestants, maybe they read too much Ayn Rand, so on. What this does is merely reinforce leftism as a thing to adopt as a counter-culture rather than as a political foundation.

This is just anecdotal, but the Burgerville Union in Portland was largely organized with the support/advice of the local IWW chapter. Though it obviously helps that Portland has historically been a fairly strong labor town.

THE IWW SHAT ON THE AFL FOR DECCENTRALIZATION, AAAHHHHHHHHHH
Read Robert Hoxie

Socialism has been been so marginalized in American culture that the denial of the native proletariat as a revolutionary subject is second nature to most self-described "leftists." The position that an absolute majority of the US population is hopelessly, permanently "reactionary" is taken as a given, and therefore socialism is only to be accomplished by the native lumpenproletariat, or some foreign nation like China, or by capital imploding itself without any human subject at all. The mass death of most American workers and bourgeois along the way is also taken as given, of course.

youtube.com/watch?v=T2UF8yw89yE
youtube.com/watch?v=tEf_kbAHT40
Hmmmmm

Is this even a materialist analysis? Sounds more fascistic than anything, that culture–not material conditions–drives people to action.

Socialism exists marginalized because the two party state has made it near-impossible for socialists to function as an electoral force, and regardless of what you may think even the Bolsheviks attended elections, people voting for you, even if you can accomplish nothing in office, shows they have faith in you and your ability to change things.

Instead Socialism finds itself marginalized from electoral power, and rather than trying to build up non-electoral power, through union membership, through mutual aid programs, so and so forth, students latched onto it and made it a counterculture thing. Expecting it to make it big when everyone in the movement seems like they're attempting to one up one another by being more of a stern faced "revolutionary" zealot, and by sneering at the entire United States, its people, its history, and its culture as hopelessly reactionary.

All of this is in spite of the fact that the most successful "communist" revolutions took place in countries where it was assumed that the autocrat in charge of things was appointed by the divine, where the masses were illiterate and uninformed, where they were hyper religious, and far more reactionary than the U.S. ever was.

And yet people stupidly think the U.S. is unsalvagable! The fact is if the socialist movement here is unsalvageable, it's only the fault of idiots among the movement itself. Even Lenin confessed to a psuedo-patriotism, in stating that the Bolsheviks loved their country, this is in spite of many of those Bolsheviks being victims of pogroms and the worst kinds of oppression by the Tsar.

Yet take a country like America, compare it to Russia's history, and realize that it's stupid to think that somehow the United States is "more reactionary" than Russia, and those who argue it is are just being useless idiots.

I confess, that if half the Bolsheviks were as useless as third worldists are, sneering at peasants for their "backwardsness", confessing that they despised the Russian people, culture, and history, then the Revolution would've been an immense failure.

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Very good post, shame that goofy wordfilter spoiled it or I would screencap.

Are you burgers? Because man I'll never be convinced of any sort of revolutionary potential in burgerville.

Are you?

Good post, mate. Not american and I really don't like how the US backed a military coup in my country but the only way for the US to become a decent country is through marxism.

Revolution is impossible in the imperial core. Also America leftists are for whatever reason really attached to the democratic party which means that even if leftism becomes more popular it still won't amount to anything as any revolutionary energy will be channeled into electoralism instead of being used to build or strengthen an independent party/movement.

Not when the contradictions build
Bernie and the Democrat Cops of America are going to fucking die, I'm calling it

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I find the “muh Fox News watchin’ Walmart shoppin’ gun lovin’ Hicks” stereotype is absurd, I have lived in this country all my life, my family’s history extends all the way back to the founding of this country. The “stupid red scared American” trope is probably one of the dumbest things I’ve encountered. It’s pure Hollywood.

Our country was gripped by the OWS protests a few years back, we have a labor history fraught with actual militant violence against laborers—planes dropping bombs, etc—and even Trump’s election is testament to the squeeze people are feeling by capitalism.

More than any other western country, the American worker is worked harder and treated worse, and you somehow think there’s no revolutionary potential? How stupid must a supposed “Marxist” be to say that in spite of the history of communist movements in the third world, in Russia and China of all places—two nations with some of the longest standing traditions of being autocratic and reactionary—that there is something in the American character that is just too “backwards” to accept communism. That somehow an anti Semitic illiterate peasant state could embrace communism, but the US can’t.

The typical excuse is that the American worker is just so privileged that he supports imperialism because he has it so “good” under the system, but the fact is that American workers have seen their pay stagnate and have progressively less free time. He is growing progressively more angered at his treatment, and THIS is where his revolutionary potential lies.

I am glad to learn more about actual American's take on this matter but as long as your country's military advantage remains, you will not run out of country to invade and implant democracy (tm) and your country will be able to squeeze your own people bit less to tame them. Russia and China is slowly starting to gain edge on some departments but that's even more pessimistic as we are actually hoping to be opportunists in the middle of new imperial conflicts.

like seriously plz sind halp. how the fuck is dialectic supposed to work in nuclear missile era

have you actually talked to americans

Have you talked to Americans irl?

yes

True. Cultural change must precede political change.

Literally the opposite of what he said.

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I am an American.

Our country doesn't squeeze it's people less. If anything, it just uses its imperial state as a bulwark for the corporate class. Our infrastructure is falling apart, and hell, part of the reason Trump was elected is that things are legitimately terrible for the working class in some places.

A couple years ago, I went camping by this town in the far south of Oregon, almost on the border with Northern California. I had a buddy that owned property up there, driving through the town the signs of poverty were obvious, most people seemed to be living in these shacks, cobbled together from whatever scrapwood the people could find. I was informed that the town wasn't exactly safe after dark, as the total lack of any emergency service infrastructure meant that the locals had to stay armed to protect themselves as no police would be coming to help them–along with the implication that one of his neighbors potentially murdered a local punk that was harassing an elderly widow.

Here, everything seemed so ramshackle. You could find people living in abhorrent shanty towns that seemed right out of a textbook on the great depression.

These are people living in such poor conditions that they even have to develop their own rugged kind of law where murders are quietly practiced now and again in order to "keep the peace". If there were any people that could benefit from Socialism in America, it would be them.

And so why don't they choose Socialism? Well I would argue this is because as myself and others have mentioned, Socialism has become a counter-cultural thing. People use it to signal their opposition to the predominant culture, rather than feel out actually sensible political goals. Politics as a whole has been subsumed by ones stance on cultural issues, this being no surprise as it is in the interest of the rich to keep it that way.

The one building this community could come together to maintain was a small little Lutheran parish. My friends and I engaged in local community activities, namely firing a Kalashnikov in a public landfill, there we encountered a Native American wearing a "Love It or Leave It" shirt who asked us if he could give our AK a try and wanted to know if we smoked weed.

There was irony and contradictions inherent in the culture of course. The local black family said they hoped no more "California niggers" moved up north, even the most conservative people we encountered seemed to smoke Mary Jane, the people were angry of the government's poor management of the local environment while also disgusted by "hippie environmentalists".

But that's what culture is, it's a little mess of contradictions, and we take the most recurring patterns of thought at face value and say it's "our" culture. It's also why Zig Forums and Zig Forums have such problems breaking into the mainstream.

In spite of Zig Forums's supposed nationalism, the racism it practices and "ideals" it holds to are so contradictory, or taken to such an extreme, that it can safely be said that even if one were to take their most mainstream ideas, they would never be able to find a society at any point in the last century that could approach the level of fervor and ruthless ideological purity that they inflict on themselves. Even the racists of the old confederacy would balk at Zig Forums's strange, weird, violent fantasies.

Yet this is a double edged sword. It seems much of the left has similarly fallen into its own counter-culture, we all know the habit of "leftist" parties being glorified microsects, but more than that you'll find the worst sort of militant atheists and social progressives among left movements today, that it couldn't ever hope to approach a legitimate understanding of mainstream culture.

I remember once, someone on here said the left could stand to be more patriotic in the U.S., as patriotism is a pretty big thing here, in response one of the replies mentioned leftist parties wearing cowboy hats to "display their patriotism".

Like Zig Forums, these leftists look at the aesthetic, not the idea. Worse, they so totally reject the aesthetic, that they become annoying little killjoys, or even seen as hostile to the very way of life of the people they supposedly want to help.

You'll never convince the people of that little, poor town, to tear down their church, smash the altar, and build some community art house. You can convince them that socialism will help their homes, and part of building trust is showing your part of the culture.

No, this doesn't mean adopting an aesthetic as Zig Forums tries to. This means actively being involved in the culture. Go shooting with the locals, even if you don't believe in God, maybe go to a Church potluck or volunteer. Enjoy 4th of July for the fireworks, instead of screeching that "Washington was a slaveowner and America was built on lies"

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10/10 post, especially about the countercultural Left

bravo, user

Which is what enables reactionaries to heroically strike down straw man like 'cultural Marxism' .

Then why are you keep trying to play their game?

Maybe I'm asking wrong question as I do not understand what you mean by culture and how it differs from other social relations as shaped by capitalism. Either I'm being obtuse to such concept or you are fetishizing it.

Whatever is the case, true question remains: what prevents American left to confront their economical problem in economic approach? That is, if con job like Donald Trump could work, why couldn't you push far left populist with strong economic reform programs? I'm asking for actual batshit insane politician who would propose to abolish landlordism, provide free high education, free healthcare, unionization, nationalization of key infrastructure, infrastructure reform and any other items that your people SHOULD crave.

Do you really think you can Trojan horse such promises under relatably revamped socialists with American aesthetics? Do you really think you can overshadow existential meme of your country 'American dream is this concept even relevant in 2k19? '? Penetrate thick skulls of people who worship entrepreneurship?

Do you actually believe this? American slaveowners were insanely brutal.

They only were missing confederate anime tbh

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Americans will never accept marxist-leninism so the best way forward is libertarian socialism because freedumbs.

planning on it
Long dead even though i wish it wasnt there needs to be more leftcom orgs
Im not ML
dont know about them but the only trots i find ok so far are IMT
Know them, dont like them, prefer IMT
Boomer Democrat Cops of America, basically dead

Anyways im involved in Democrat Cops of America and IMT shit, planning on getting involved with the IWW too. Im pretty open about socialism and communism to my friends who srent and i have friends who are leftists of all types.

*ahem*
iww.org/history/myths/8

Also adding on to this that i still think the IMT are flawd with meme dated trot praxis

Also while i do not generally like traditional ML parties, the one org that I really like their praxis and miggt have potential (even if they are ML) os marxist center, although idk if they have any branches on the east coast

Exactly.

You have to deal with your "brand identity", even if it's untrue, and even if you don't like it. To give a personal example, I work in retail, a customer once told me that she went to a wedding in the California wine country, and to save costs (as well as run a little social experiment) the host got these expensive wine bottles, like $15 stuff, and he filled them all with a bargain $3 wine. No one at the wedding knew the wine was stuff they could buy at any low-end grocery store, they all appraised it, sniffed it, swirled it around in their glass, sipped it and tried to detect the "flavor notes."

If you tried serving these people wine in the original bottle, they'd complain that it's low-end, blase, or even that it tastes terrible. If you revealed the ruse after the fact, those same people would probably insist they always "knew" it was bad but humored the host anyways.

The moral of this story, is that that fact sadly gives way to image in our modern capitalist society, once you learn to play the game you can win, however.

I'd say, funny enough, I'm not "playing the game". Truth be told, I'm pretty conservative on most social issues. I'm a Catholic. I tend to prefer the company of conservatives to liberals and even some socialists. All in all, I would say I don't "play the game" in the slightest. I am not part of the "counter-culture" but rather "the culture".

Well there's a myriad different cultures in the U.S., but the most predominant cultural trope is American Patriotism. Loving the country, respecting the founding fathers, celebrating 4th of July, this is all part of the mainstream culture of the U.S., if the left earns a reputation for sperging out at that patriotism, then it creates an image of itself as an "outsider" to the culture it wants to take root in, as something "alien" and "threatening" to it–regardless of the reasons for that opposition in the first place.

So my premise is fairly simple: engage with the culture. Yeah some of the founders did own some slaves, the natives did get the short end of the stick, and we do have a sad history of racial violence and slavery, yet none of these things are going to stop me from celebrating independence day with my friends, or enjoying Thanksgiving at face value, or even singing the national anthem at Baseball games. Truth be told I love my country, and I want it to be better.

Let me put it like this, there's a saying here: "Only Nixon could go to China"; meaning back in the height of the Cold War, when it looked like there'd be an armed conflict between the USSR and the PRC, Nixon went on a diplomatic mission to China and essentially brought them closer to us on the international stage. Hell it might've even prevented open warfare between the two. The saying comes from the idea that if a democratic president went to China, he'd be accused of communist sympathies and his poll numbers would slip.

1/?

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I think what I'm about to say is important enough that it deserves its own post.

In America, we have a strange relationship with "the foreign". To be perfectly frank, I'm a WASP. On my father's side of the family, we arrived as indentured servants from England just a year after we declared independence, and on my mother's family were some of the first anglo-scot settlers in the U.S. I'm also Catholic, as my great grandmother immigrated from her homeland in Czechia and brought her Catholicism with her, enough that my grandmother insisted when she married her protestant husband that their children be raised Catholic, and my mother insisted upon marrying my (protestant turned agnostic) father that I be raised Catholic too. I look like a WASP, talk like one, but my religion is "foreign" enough here that people make this uninformed distinction that they're "Christian, not Catholic". Our country will celebrate the foreign heritage of her people when holidays like Chinese New Year or St. Patrick's Day or even Oktoberfest come around, but this is set against a history which at times has harshly persecuted the foreign. We've been captivated by religious great awakenings brought by predominantly German protestants, yet when it comes to the nature of our Republic, the foreign is cast in a suspicious light. We're isolationists, but love to travel. We love foreign cuisine and outfits and movies, and while we make poor tourists we're excellent hosts… on top of all this however, lingers the idea of some things being "un-american": while we celebrate Oktoberfest, it was quite common for us to outright lynch German-Americans during the World Wars as an example. This notion of "un-americaness" is the most powerful obstacle that the capitalist class can level at communists, and this tired trope has been repeated time and again for almost every ethnicity under the sun. The implication being that an idea is foreign, and that it seeks to place foreign power over Americans and destroy the republic.

The question those of us worried about cultural stigmatism have to ask ourselves, is how do we fight this accusation? To which I say that a change in rhetoric (and ONLY in rhetoric) can weaponize this tool of the capitalist class against itself.

Most Americans are, in fact, suspicious of corporate conglomerates all the while admiring the "entrepreneur", similarly they're suspicious of the federal government. The easiest and most useful thing to do, would be to accuse the Capitalists of being anti-capitalist. Simply put, they're out of touch, they wall themselves off from their countrymen, they start wars that claim American lives, all the while their own children go to college and rule over the maimed and crippled veterans of our military.

Accuse congress of being run by aristocratic dynasties, and most powerfully of all, exclaim from the heavens that these people are selling the country out (which they are).

When tobacco companies were dealing with the revelation that smoking is bad for you, they eventually moved away from claiming its healthy, or trying to deny these facts, to just not addressing them at all. They would simply say that their tobacco is "toasted", people would imagine that somehow means its healthier for them, or that it's "safe", and for a little while they dissuaded people from worrying about what cigarettes were doing to their health.

Similarly, most Americans wont care about the color or demographics of a Marxist party, if you keep pushing this idea that Wall Street is unamerican.

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I agree with everything but the "respect muh flag" idea. It doesn't fit into the whole "people have to right to overthrow an unjust government" thing that people claim to represent, especially since it elevates the government into a thing of worship/adore that shouldn't be threatened
Also the hammer and sickle and tools on the West Virginia IWW's logo are dank and get you on TV because of the audacityit takes to do that

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My brain tells me your plan is pure ideology but my dick is confused

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This is rule #1 of winning the battle of words dude. Steal your opponent's language from them and they'll have no weapons to fight you with. I have lost count of how many times I've referred to wage-labor as "un-American."

The Black Panthers 10 point program was phrased like this as well I believe

Well here's the thing about the flag: it's an abstract symbol, it means different things to different people. The problem with destroying a symbol, is that it's like trying to perform surgery with a butcher's cleaver, eventually you're going to cut into something you shouldn't.

So when you think we shouldn't respect the flag because it represents the American government, or because it calls to images the history of capitalism and imperialism in this country, it wont be hard for someone somewhere to exclaim that you're disrespecting the memory of their grandson who died to an IED in Iraq, or that you're disrespecting the idea of free speech and the pursuit of happiness.

I think one of the most important marketing lessons the left needs to learn, is appreciating diversion over conflict. Remember what I said about cigarette companies just not addressing health claims? Well rather than "disrespecting" the flag, I think something far more devious and clever would be the creation of a peoples' flag.

In your home, or at ball games, or at party meetings, use a flag that is unattached to the American state, but still clearly American in character. If you have to pledge allegiance to anything, make it allegiance to that flag. If people attack you for it, well then they can't attack you for pledging allegiance to a foreign nation, or to not respecting the flag, but only for using a different flag. Let your response be that you're "pledging allegiance to the country, not the government", and they'll sputter out because the terrible truth about many of these "love it or leave it" types is that while they say they love the country, usually they end up hating the government, and they probably wont embarrass themselves by actually trying to defend the government.

I generally don't like the hammer and sickle, if only because its association with the soviet union (as well as the sickle's representation of rural peasantry, something alien to the American mindset) makes it look to "foreign" or like you wish to live in some American puppet state. I think a far better symbol for the American left would be the Statue of Liberty.

Well, I'm not a political philosopher, I'm just a working class guy with a marketing degree. Yeah maybe it is ideology, but I think we can let slide the occasional theoretical sin in favor of winning more people over to the cause.

This is a great example right here. Hell I know a guy whose dad is a vietnam vet, they're pretty right wing, but his dad honestly respects Ho Chi Minh and had nothing but good things to say about him.

Ding ding ding!

Even the American Dream can be used against capitalism. Trump proclaimed, to the cheers of patriots, that the American Dream is "dead", just to state how bad things have gotten. Similarly, leftists should argue that "Corporations killed the American Dream", that the sheer work load placed on Americans is murdering the dream, that we've seen our freedoms, rights, and prosperity erode to a military-industrial complex that is killing the American Dream. This is powerful rhetoric.

I think it used language from the Declaration of Independence, yes. It was smart of them to do, and probably won them some extra sympathy.

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So when you think we shouldn't respect the flag because it represents the American government, or because it calls to images the history of capitalism and imperialism in this country, it wont be hard for someone somewhere to exclaim that you're disrespecting the memory of their grandson who died to an IED in Iraq, or that you're disrespecting the idea of free speech and the pursuit of happiness.
Iran's fucking Ayatollah got good press by just stating "death to America" meant "down with imperialism", so it's showing what it stands for and burning it for some press
It's also not hard to say that the flag stands for America silencing the IWW in the 1900's and sending their grandson Jimmy into a war that we're stuck in by design of Mr. oil Barron
It doesn't even have to be a flag, it could be a song like the battle cry of freedom. hell, songs like the red flag came from wobblies shouting over the salvation army band doing some Christian songs.
The Hammer and Sickle is infamous (tenant Farmers that exist aplenty are basically U.S peasants) and that's a good thing because of the attention it brings when accompanied by familiar Americana

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Fucking hell, these are some badass flag designs, especially the middle and the right one.

See infamy as a marketing technique is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and while it may have been great decades ago when businesses were competing to get their name out, we live at a point in history where there are plenty of non “shocking” ways to get people to notice you. I also fear that the more you advertise with edge, the more you’ll get edgy people in socialist movements, which runs the risk of backfiring.

I think that these days, irony and taboo breaking have played their course. People have had their fill of it, and the Jordan Peterson’s of the world notice this and capitalize on it with this kind of conservative reaction, a supposed return to “normalcy” a revitalization of certain culturally accepted “truths” and traditions in an effort to escape from insufferable liberals and the cultural effects of globalization. It’s a similar attitude as people who convert to new religions in an effort to experience some kind of spiritual fulfillment.

Point being, advertising ourselves with “edge” only gives us the image of being an immature “fad”, we need maturity and sincerity to win the masses over.

You can still be a totally radical brotendo while still being serious, the IWW (sorry for bringing this up again) was reeed at by the Democrat Cops of America prototype "Socialist party" and everybody else for representing "anarchy and jacobinism", but they kept gaining memebers

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Might be moving into Chicago soon and all this IWW talk is interesting. Anyone have any thoughts or experiences with them or the area in general? I am definitely more partial to union action than parties.

I kinda feel that just like Europe has "Eurocommunism", the US needs, "Americommunism" or whatever else you might want to call it. A school of Marxist thought that is geared towards the particular conditions and situation of the USA, as opposed to just blindly following the lead of our European comrades, as some often do. The American state and business realm have done so many awful things that leftist here are afraid to speak up for the American workers, as if internationalism applies to everyone but us.

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t. doesn't know what Eurocommunism is

Eurocommunism is for SuccDems who want to LARP as Communists.

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I feel like this is a pretty important point, maybe worthy of another thread. If our goal is to construct a left movement and truly American kind of socialism, where do we begin? This thread has good ideas, but they won’t go anywhere if we do nothing with them.

Tbh I think socialism in Amrerica HAS to mean restorative justice for all the Native American nations and for minorities in general, land restoration, right of return, and protection of resources from exploitation.

Autism. Socialism in America has to mean abolition of private property.

America needs a cultural revolution once it has a socialist movement. So many things from the past need to be destroyed. Especially the artifacts cherished by the cult of the founders (the US Constitution, all statues of the founders, the liberty bell, etc.)

what is this quiz?

I know that it's broadly a revisionist strain that at its worst falls into SocDem, but its originators claimed it was a theory of praxis more suitable to Western Europe than other schools. True or not, it's that sense I was trying to analogize with. I've also heard the term used to refer to any pro-EU communists, and that's perhaps closer to the definition I'm forming here.

Nuclear hot takes

You can abolish property and enfranchise native peoples, it's called restorative justice for a reason

Why is it a hot take? Nobody here would unironically defend Israeli or Ulster Scott settlerism, so why defend American settlerism? They're the same thing in character

We're revolutionaries, not barbarians. We shouldn't destroy historical artifacts just because they were of a time we're not fond of. It was the Western powers who tried to comb over the Nazi camps, while the Soviets made sure to preserve all the evidence of their evil.

I don't think you know what this means.

Nigga, that's the present, not 300 years ago

I hope you're not suggesting we keep things like Mt. Rushmore or statues of Washington or god forbid, fucking Confederate statues