This is some retarded liberalism. Only reactionaries and their enablers virtue signal about "free speech" (which isn't something they practice or ever will) and you shouldn't play their game. We aren't hypocrites because we see how free speech is bullshit and are open about our aims to deplatform reactionaries. Reactionaries have to be ostracized.
kek
Speak for yourself you stupid fuck. We're not living under socialism yet and unfortunately we have to navigate the world of liberal laws and communication methods. "Deplatform" the reactionaries and you only fuel their victim complex and radicalize them against us further. Worse, you provide justification for deplatforming yourself, which they will gladly and happily do. Have a look at the Espionage and Sedition Acts sometime. You can thumb your nose at current power structures all you want but that doesn't change the power they have over people right now. Our historic task isn't to silence people who disagree with us, it's to convince them that we have the solutions.
Quite ironic considering the vast majority of censorship-happy retards are liberals.
Ran for a national office last year.
I didn't get elected, you know. In the end I'd say the outcome was worse than I expected in the beginning and better than I expected towards the end. My initial aim was to build a grassroots bloc and raise awareness for my particular ideology and against the DNC/GOP. Towards the end I wasn't sure I'd get even 6 votes - I exceeded this very meager expectation, but not enough to make much of a dent. Better than nothing, and I don't regret running and would recommend it.
Problems?
Well, the first thing I encountered was bureaucratic. Surprisingly, this was generally a very small part of my frustrations - the elections division was relatively easy to deal with and didn't try anything funny. However, the corporations division is who you have to register PACs with, and I didn't even know about that on time so my ability to accept donations was pretty much fucked because I would have had to register a corporation with them in order to open a campaign account with the bank. The first several times the bank denied my request, they couldn't actually tell me this was the reason why.
Those issues are in large part on me, though - I started relatively late, alone, and without a whole lot of knowledge of the system. Had I planned better I could have gotten around this using the same amount of resources at my disposal.
Another problem is the relatively obscure nature of my ideology - running as a Georgist meant I didn't have much of a pre-existing bloc. Like if I was running as a socialist or a libertarian or a green or even a fascist – those ideologies have broad enough existing bases that I would get niche support from some small segment of the population by default. Like I could just say "socialist" or "libertarian" and they'd be there for those words. Georgist doesn't work that way, and when you explain what it is a lot of times you'll have people parsing it as either libertarian (because no income tax) or socialist (because land as common property), often dependent on which of those ideologies they like less.
Running write-in was the option I could afford, but meant I wasn't displayed on the ballots on the day, of course.
A much larger problem than most of these, however, was dealing with the press. Aside from a few independent outlets, the media largely wouldn't mention me. I'd filled out all the forms, had a presence online, I was even running ads - but the biggest local papers and news outlets acted like I didn't exist. This only (sort of) changed after I nagged them about it online where people could see - after which I was mentioned once. They also barred write-ins from the debates.
Twitter refused to verify that I was a political candidate, too.
What worked well? Well, running political ads on TV is surprisingly cheap. A lot of people were more receptive to my ideas than I would have expected when these ideas were discussed directly. Those are the things that come to mind as having worked well.
It didn't really effect my ideology. Everything that was wrong with politics and electoralism when I went in was still wrong when I came out. That said, I think I understood the process much better after running than I did before running - so I think everyone who has the time and isn't doing something else should run. Zerg rushing the elections with anti-establishment candidates would be good, even if just to reveal by demonstration how the system was automatically stacked against them.
Lol
Do you really thing a land value tax is going to solve everything?
There are 30 communists (half are about to die of age) in my city of 6-8 million. there's also some anarchists, maybe like 20-25.
You're blessed my niqqa.
The city's communist group's main activities are
-release strong opinions on shit going on in the country (which nobody reads)
-go to labor marches (not protests, since there are none)
-study sessions (very superficial)
-sell shit to make money to donate to socialist groups
There are only two things I'm interested in, theory and the party's size. I can't figure out how to improve either.
LVT would solve rentierism and land inflation, so yeah I think it would solve a ton of poverty and homelessness and be more efficient for production. It wasn't my only position, but yes the primary tenet of my economics is getting rid of landlordry as a profitable profession. I'm not super impressed with the ML model, which at this point I honestly think is probably about the closest realization of Marxism that there's ever been - I can't really say I've seen a better way of addressing the wage problem, so I focus on what I'm convinced can definitely be fixed. It's a legitimate ethical issue - maybe a geo-mutualist society could solve both landlordry and wage slavery at once, but I have zero clue how to transition into that sort of society. My concern is that it would be scary!
Our historic task is to organize the working class into socialism and through that into communism. The only thing that matters is how we achieve these ends. We need only analyse the current situation and act in whichever ways benefit our interests the best.
Clinging to ideals like "liberal power will clamp down on the left the second we make any noticeable move" and "our historic task is to convince fascists that we are right" is counter to our goals as communists.
Sometimes barring fascists from public forums is effective. Sometimes violence is. All moves must be on the table, or else we fail. Our enemies do not hold punches and do not limit themselves, we must operate on the same level or else we will be outmaneuvered.
Specifically, scare-mongering about overt state action doesn't seem to have any basis, as the vast majority of anti-left repression in the US today happens through indirect means. An activist gets picked up for some minor infraction that may or may not have actually occurred, and ends up dead in jail from """suicide""". No law is necessary for this to occur, only the existence and autonomy of capitalist law enforcement.
There is a covert campaign of anti-left assassinations happening in the US that you aren't even aware of because of your idealistic focus on politic topics that are insignificant to material reality. You blind yourself with moralism. Drop it.
Yup toxic personalities is also a huge problem and where I’ve seen failures in top down democracy it is usually because of this, combined with the social capital these people can often acquire. This is another problem, if someone is likeable or a natural leader their bad ideas can have more weight than somebody who is more reserved but has better ideas
nope. We should start as we mean to go on. The majority of people are not fascists, therefore this doesn't qualify as a public use of public space.
based, but surely you have some insider critiques of the republicans campaign. What issues lead you to reading Marx?
also
this is both sickening and heartening, sickening because you pretended to care for the people, heartening because they won't be listened to, won't get what they want, and therefore will be less likely to vote republican.
in your honest opinion how do you think the electoralism is going, how much party energy does it use up and how much power/influence does it actually build?
is it a communist party?
as i said above i am fine clearing fascists out of public space but in this day and age digital space is basically unlimited so i'd still allow it as part of general discourse, however the real problem is equalizing the narratives so the ones people actually believe in get the time in the sun, rather than the media putting stuff to the fore.
so you ran on an independet georgist platform?
Did you have plan, like a strategy that you came up with before that you then implemented? How did you attempt to raise support? Obv ads on TV and stuff but did you campaign on any issues or go doorknocking or something? Did you have a campaign team? How did it function/was it structured?
yeh my city has a pretty rich radical history which is pretty good but also fairly strong social democracy which means everyone who is "left wing" are in the green/labour zone.
I assume you are a member of this small communist party? Have you tried doing community survival stuff, land expropriation like taking over an abandoned building, working with the labour movement, trade unions and such, building maybe a tenants union? These are the ways i think you get real power and not many places have tenants unions although the movement is growing and can be very effective done right.