fleights posted:I'm completely with the PCR-RCP in this regard, you can't effectively combat a highly organized state and military through a disorganized people's movement. It's necessary to form a party, an army, and gain mass consciousness with the working class.
The concept of an organised party is fantastic and the are well valuable for gaining experience in actual street politics but their role in the movement as it exists today can be problematic since it plays into sectarianism which although not an entirely incorrect position in the context of labor aristocratic people is also damaging in the context of trying to build from sparks of anger.
That has been the lesson taught in all the recent struggles from the anti war movement to austerity.
I dont really have an answer past that though since their is a stark contradiction between the use of organisations for building smaller revolutionary structures and their inability to work together to form larger revolutionary structures (in the current context of social democracy, split working class, privileged unions and extraordinarily alienated youth) but its just something to keep in mind since its easy to over emphases the awesomeness of organisations especially when you can see what they can produce on that small scale.
getfiscal posted:prikryl posted:ofc, if the franchise was open to all non-communists directly in 1924, which is not what I think we're advocating here. It doesn't even seem like there was an open vote on policy between the three factions within the party and including non-factional communists to even build around democratic centralism, even with all the publishing going on, and that the unofficial factions just imposed de facto policy through loose alliances that threatened to crush and did crush the lesser faction, which I'm certainly sure Lenin would not have approved of despite the Crisis Situation. Democracy in the Party, Centralism after Decision, and then build to inclusion. Not sure this was happening or codified in any way during the 20s post-civil war crisis period. This all through hindsight and sitting in a cool, comfortable room millions of miles away from civil war and starvation, naturally
well, something i haven't said yet is that lenin and stalin both believed that factionalism wasn't something healthy in a party. factionalism is a sign of contradictions within a party, and society more generally. this is part of why lenin banned factions. the belief was that you could approach a correct decision using marxist science and that the party embodied this scientific approach. party debates weren't supposed to be about fundamental issues of line so much as the details. and there was often a lot of debate about the details, even if the structures were sort of paralyzed by stalinist terror at times.
democratic centralism and a ban on factions is well liberating inside a party structure especially if their is a true sense that you can debate the details the only problem is its well intimidating for new comrades plus you get a contradiction around the leadership about how much they force what are effectively editorial lines against the fact they tend to be the only ones with enough organisational experience to phase in large changes
the idea of allowing factions would likely cause splits in the movement as it exists and that is another place where an "anti party" attitude (in the concrete situation since parties in the sense of organisational structures are literally necessary) can be useful because it allows you to approach struggles and form analysis around them rather then leading to overly historical rating style analysis
gyrofry posted:methodological individualism for the motherfucking lose
my original reply to this was going to be 'eat poop'
i still like that, but i will add that the entire point of harbouring these desires to remake the economic and political structure of our world is to remake them in a way that embraces and gives primacy to social human relationships and structures rather than our current numeric alien mode of existence. if in the discussion of that remaking we reject the idea of thinking of individual people as people and instead rely on scientific abstractions so as not to clutter our theory-space with messy things like actual human beings and the vulgar things they may actually feel, we have already fucked up and are just putting a marxy face on the same old dehumanizing shit
i am not arguing that "well, people are complicated, so everything is ~too confusing~ to ever understand, oh dear", i am just asking people to consider the realities of being a person irl when trying to ascertain their propensity to join a revolution.
i think it lends weight to the necessity of a vanguard.
Think about the amazing power we possess. As a cat, I understand the needs of the feline community more than any other human can. We have the opportunity to be liaisons between the animal kingdom and human society.
We already know that we are not going to be able to continue on this path of unsustainable living. We have to start focusing on our relationship to the environment and the ecosystems of the rest of the earth’s creatures.
Otherkin are the only people who can actively speak on behalf of these populations. We are part of their collective conscious. We are connected to our species the way an artery is to the heart. The only way the world will ever achieve peaceful coexistence, balance, and eco-responsibility is through the guidance of Otherkin.
People may laugh at us now, but what they don’t realize is that we hold the key to the survival of our planet. They need us.
One day they’ll see. One day they will be begging us for our wisdom. Just you wait.
peepaw posted:is anyone else watching piers morgan getting yelled at by alex jones on cnn? it's the best thing to happen in american media since we staged the moon landing
HenryKrinkle posted:http://www.socialistunity.com/swp-conference-transcript-disputes-committee-report/
ha i know Karen she is the cliche paid party member to the 9
she literally refuses to talk to me after i got loads of her comrades to accept Cuba as a socialist state like she literally once sat a table away from me in a cafe and looked the other way when i said hi
Edited by SovietFriends ()
SovietFriends posted:i probably should have given that more context so it wasn't just a boring personnel story but basically she is the absolute worst and endemic of what party structures can produce in the context of the modern movement and that is a lesson which needs to be taken into account when thinking about how the party as an abstract mechanic works in what marxists should do today since its not as such something to do with how you structure a party but more to do with what role parties can and do play in the movement
tpaine posted:
is there a compilation youtube of just the character swearing and nothing else
babyhueypnewton posted:getfiscal i still have no idea what 'Stalinism' is. if it's 'state capitalism' or 'socialism in one country' it's obviously a trotskyist word and has serious errors. if it's 'the policies of joseph stalin', that's just lazy liberalism, marxism demands actual definitions and what separates stalinism from maoism or castroism or what have you in a political-economic sense (unless all of them are stalinism, in which case lol). don't just lazily throw words around, it makes it hard to take what you say seriously.
babyhueypnewton posted:getfiscal i still have no idea what 'Stalinism' is. if it's 'state capitalism' or 'socialism in one country' it's obviously a trotskyist word and has serious errors. if it's 'the policies of joseph stalin', that's just lazy liberalism, marxism demands actual definitions and what separates stalinism from maoism or castroism or what have you in a political-economic sense (unless all of them are stalinism, in which case lol). don't just lazily throw words around, it makes it hard to take what you say seriously.
here's the definition of stalinism: swag in one country; 5 yolo year plan
drwhat posted:gyrofry posted:methodological individualism for the motherfucking lose
if in the discussion of that remaking we reject the idea of thinking of individual people as people and instead rely on scientific abstractions so as not to clutter our theory-space with messy things like actual human beings and the vulgar things they may actually feel, we have already fucked up and are just putting a marxy face on the same old dehumanizing shit.
indeed, our "theory" must never blind us to the immutable human desire for a variety of quality dentifrices from which to choose
SovietFriends posted:i probably should have given that more context so it wasn't just a boring personnel story but basically she is the absolute worst and endemic of what party structures can produce in the context of the modern movement and that is a lesson which needs to be taken into account when thinking about how the party as an abstract mechanic works in what marxists should do today since its not as such something to do with how you structure a party but more to do with what role parties can and do play in the movement
Hey dont let the fact that the peanit gallery posted Fambly guy at you. Karen sounds like a real jerk. I think this kind of obsessive proceduralizing happens in many places, it sounds like she is not a very confident leader of people and has learned to rely on the elaborate rule structure of whatever tarted up brand of parliamentary procedure they're banging. Probably that is made worse by her comrades UNDERMINING HER IN THE CAFE ALL THE TIME. I am joking.
chaaandler, i can't believe you convinced joey that cuba is an example of actually existing socialism. monica is never going to forgive EITHER of us!!
drwhat posted:meanwhile, at the cafe la che in west london...
chaaandler, i can't believe you convinced joey that cuba is an example of actually existing socialism. monica is never going to forgive EITHER of us!!
So no-one told you history was gonna be this way
Look at the volk, they’re broke, fascism isn’t far away
It’s like you’re always stuck in second year (university)
When it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month or even your historical epoch
I’ll sell papers to you, when degenerate states start to fall
I’ll sell papers to you, like granddad did before
I’ll sell papers to you, can you please give me fooood?
swampman posted:Hey dont let the fact that the peanit gallery posted Fambly guy at you. Karen sounds like a real jerk. I think this kind of obsessive proceduralizing happens in many places, it sounds like she is not a very confident leader of people and has learned to rely on the elaborate rule structure of whatever tarted up brand of parliamentary procedure they're banging. Probably that is made worse by her comrades UNDERMINING HER IN THE CAFE ALL THE TIME. I am joking.
I think the analysis needs to a step beyond the proceduralizing that occurs in organisations and look more at the actual nature of organisations in the movement today since if we dont look at that we can end up just assuming its an organisational problem we can fix rather then a problem with the idea of trying to mirror past revolutionary structures.
The fact is that something needs to be produced which can utilize the organisational mechanics an organisation provides in particular producing incentives for actual education and responsibility as well as being open like the more general structures that actual movements produce for making sure people can miss out the sectarianism, individuation, stratification, proceduralizing and reification that mirroring past revolutionary structures produces.
Fixing that is a very real problem which in my view has undercut at least the left in the UK more then actual ideological debates (though not as much as material conditions cos this is about organising re: the movement) and I reckon part of solving it would be being prepared to distill the essential role of the vanguard party outside of its traditional structure and make it a bit more "Connolly Club" style.
It was rubbish when she ignored me. I said her name twice and then just had to sit in silence looking at my phone cos I had bought a stay in coffee and didnt bring a book. At one point I kicked the table leg and it did that thing where the coffee just spills out a little bit all over your hand and on the table as well.
She wasnt my comrade as well.
Comrades dont let personlity get in the way...
(Plus she was in a different organisation which I used to spend alot of time slagging off)
SovietFriends posted:At one point I kicked the table leg and it did that thing where the coffee just spills out a little bit all over your hand and on the table as well.
lmfao
gyrofry posted:scenes from trot leadership discussion
i've never seen goodfellas, is it supposed to look and sound like gilbert gottfriend ADR'd both of their voices
tpaine posted:(icily, upon bumping into Karen at a party meeting) "Hello, comrade."
"your new article was excellent......... really helped clarify some of the basics"