cos it actually does work their plus you literally have to do it all the time to win
and you think that maoism has some holy set of politices when your actually describing thing most people are ok with outside of the not to educated trot malaise and its periphery
its feeding into a false sectarianism which does not as such as actually really exist and misses how to influence movements
that's not to say point or wrong you just frame it like a mental internet marxist rather then someone who actually does things like plan meetings
SovietFriends posted:have you ever done it offline?
cos it actually does work their plus you literally have to do it all the time to win
are you asking if I've ever had a debate with someone irl? Obviously. have I ever convinced someone of something through the power of logic? absolutely not, that is simply not how knowledge is reproduced or understood. unless you're arguing within the confines of already acceptable hegemony. read your lacan, son.
also i have basically 0 interest in the first world left atm, sorry if that makes me a bad marxist but this whole thread started and the continued on how the ISO, the PSL, the SWP, and I assume the other left groups are horrible and irredeemable. obviously you disagree with that conclusion.
AmericanNazbro posted:where do you see yourself in the achievement of communism?
Obviously I'll swoop in during the world revolution and provide ideological leadership, thanks to tireless years of internet posts. I'm like Lenin in exile, except instead of Switzerland I'm in exile in bed watching anime.
babyhueypnewton posted:are you asking if I've ever had a debate with someone irl? Obviously. have I ever convinced someone of something through the power of logic? absolutely not, that is simply not how knowledge is reproduced or understood. unless you're arguing within the confines of already acceptable hegemony. read your lacan, son.
also i have basically 0 interest in the first world left atm, sorry if that makes me a bad marxist but this whole thread started and the continued on how the ISO, the PSL, the SWP, and I assume the other left groups are horrible and irredeemable. obviously you disagree with that conclusion.
you really should try to start pushing people towards marxism in real life it improves the way you do things quick as fuck and is very useful to the movement
i get not loving the first world left as well but believe it or not you were born in a first world country, your responsibility is to take the tools that were handed to you by birthright and make with them the best future you can for the movement as a whole
that means you should be knowing how to organize, how to do speeches, how to network, how to speak in front of groups, how to write propaganda, how to cut through bureaucratic wank, how to organize a demo, how to organize a riot, how to deal with sectarianism, how to teach people marxism, how to deal with other marxist tendencies, how to build contacts abroad, how to make a video, how to deal with institutions, how to deal with working class organisations, how to deal with middle class organisations, how to delegate, how to do democratic centralism, how to take discipline, how to maintain yourself as well as keep active, how to keep active, how to get active quickly in a new city, how to get through organisation troubles, how to build from defeats, how to build from victories
because your role is to make sure that anti-imperialism is at least some current here so when the time comes the first world cant literally just do what it wants to movements abroad
i mean its up to you how insanely orthodox maoist you are about the degree you want to be active within an imperialist country outside of anti imperialist struggles as well but their are ways even if they are hard cos your dealing with sections of the working class everyone else ignores and so don't have structures like trade unions to meet like minds through
so basically.....
AmericanNazbro posted:where do you see yourself in the achievement of communism?
like litreally if you cant work this out then you are straight up not a communist your just a dude who has read marxism and likes it
and unless you have some marvelous hidden depth to what you do now then what you are doing now is completely alien to good activity
theory separate from the movement is ridiculous not only to you miss the important currents but you also will never have ever any actual opportunity to actually use it for the good of the movement
like do you get that?
your theory is just all planks of pointless liberal trash unless your involved and it can actually be used for the revolutionary struggle and that means that fuck off list above of stuff so when the times comes they can turn round to the hopefully then strong comrade bhpn and go "can you do a cracking speech, not to complex, to introduce anti imperialism to a crowd of people who support an anti war demo but we need to politicize because their bombing socialist *periphery economy*" because that is what is ACTUALLY necessary to build something from that low point into something both political and militant which will put forward a proper anti imperialist position in a way which can have any effect
however i'm still in a bit of shock at how awful they are and i'm not really sure what it means anymore to suck up your pride and do the hard work of humbly starting with a party for the good of the cause. you're response to prnkyl's devastating critique of the PSL is "well yeah they are pretty bad but not as bad as you say, we're still doing communist stuff which is better than nothing". maybe i missed some great post you made, cause at this point i do have the humility to rethink what it means to act intelligently and not just blindly do anything at all like an anarchist squatter with dreads.
prnkly attack on psl is absoutley fine as well and i think he is in same space as me where he might do better as an independent especially if he has the contacts and drive to do that (it is very difficult)
i do think though that despite that joining an organisation is really good for developing skills which are really hard to get independently, like you will never be invited on a platform outside of an organisation unless you have some strong academic or active qualifications
and in that context PSL are the best bet and as a communist you have a responsibility to be active so it is either that or form your own (though to be fair i only met psl in cuba so i dont REALLY know how great they are, lots of my comrades were odd with them cos of the workers world split who we were affiliated with but i did think their publication was good they talked alright and they didnt seem sectarian even to workers world comrades their)
forming your own is a very real option as well its just even harder than being independent since you will have 0 contacts and it will be like trying to join an organisation but as an outsider its always very odd
that is very practical stuff which by and large what people have complained about but in all honesty its something that has to be dealt with if we like it or not and better to learn how to manage it internally and get how it exactly works then from the outside and treat it like something its not like
for example egos in functional organizers are more damaging than anything to democratic centralism especially if they are not great theorists and learning to deal with that is not something that can be done by simply appreciating it but at the same time egos seem to naturally go to that role and in an odd way are fucking good at it
that is very practical stuff which by and large what people have complained about but in all honesty its something that has to be dealt with if we like it or not and better to learn how to manage it internally and get how it exactly works then from the outside and treat it like something its not like
for example egos in functional organizers are more damaging than anything to democratic centralism especially if they are not great theorists and learning to deal with that is not something that can be done by simply appreciating it but at the same time egos seem to naturally go to that role and in an odd way are fucking good at it
babyhueypnewton posted:I've also said that 99% of all the theorizing about marxism translates in reality to anti-imperialism in the near future, that's what we can basically do for the moment.
we really need to form a movement to reinstate the draft
getfiscal posted:
getfiscal have you read this http://monthlyreview.org/2013/03/01/china-2013
what do you think of it
getfiscal posted:i don't think it really matters what i believe or hope for or even fight for or whatever. the idea that you're going to change the world in a planet of 7 billion customers served is megalomania at best. the most you can do really is just look at trends and hope the good ones prevail and try to nudge them a tiny bit. i think part of huey's aggression in arguments comes from thinking that having the wrong opinion is catastrophic. in reality it's probably not that catastrophic. huey you could go become a settler in israel and, to paraphrase mao, it wouldn't matter much on a cosmic scale, just as the destruction of the planet earth wouldn't matter much.
getfiscal posted:don't think it really matters what i believe or hope for or even fight for or whatever. the idea that you're going to change the world in a planet of 7 billion customers served is megalomania at best. the most you can do really is just look at trends and hope the good ones prevail and try to nudge them a tiny bit. i think part of huey's aggression in arguments comes from thinking that having the wrong opinion is catastrophic. in reality it's probably not that catastrophic. huey you could go become a settler in israel and, to paraphrase mao, it wouldn't matter much on a cosmic scale, just as the destruction of the planet earth wouldn't matter much.
this is a fair point but its really bad not to give it a whirl because as much as structures decide alot of thing they are also made up of peeps
but if you take the point from what you said that everything you do should be measured by an actual full understanding of reality then deffo because otherwise you start thinking the abstract actually exists and that is daft
tpaine posted:there.
they're.
prohairesis posted:getfiscal posted:getfiscal have you read this http://monthlyreview.org/2013/03/01/china-2013
what do you think of it
Samir Amin has lost his damn mind 
getfiscal posted:i don't think it really matters what i believe or hope for or even fight for or whatever. the idea that you're going to change the world in a planet of 7 billion customers served is megalomania at best. the most you can do really is just look at trends and hope the good ones prevail and try to nudge them a tiny bit. i think part of huey's aggression in arguments comes from thinking that having the wrong opinion is catastrophic. in reality it's probably not that catastrophic. huey you could go become a settler in israel and, to paraphrase mao, it wouldn't matter much on a cosmic scale, just as the destruction of the planet earth wouldn't matter much.
babyhueypnewton posted:Samir Amin has lost his damn mind
why?
he wrote an interesting article on Chinese weird capitalism and put it really well in all the debates going on right now plus used empirical facts
i mean i am not sure i get why he selects to not define china has capitalist its not a very good justification since capitalism china has altered the framework but not the actual imperatives
aside from that though its a far better perspective then closed eyed anti empirical nonsense that just lumps in post mao China with the rest of capitalism as if its all a homogeneous blob
SovietFriends posted:babyhueypnewton posted:Samir Amin has lost his damn mind
why?
he wrote an interesting article on Chinese weird capitalism and put it really well in all the debates going on right now plus used empirical facts
i mean i am not sure i get why he selects to not define china has capitalist its not a very good justification since capitalism china has altered the framework but not the actual imperatives
aside from that though its a far better perspective then closed eyed anti empirical nonsense that just lumps in post mao China with the rest of capitalism as if its all a homogeneous blob
http://marksteelinfo.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/oh-good-lord-what-has-the-swp-gone-and-done-now/
Unsurprisingly, the discussions did continue, with hundreds of members professing outrage. So Alex Callinicos, a leading figure in the SWP, wrote an article condemning the critics, humbly titled In Defence of Leninism.
It begins, and this is an article written to defend their medieval handling of a rape allegation, remember, with a series of sentences such as “The theoretical development of Marxism requires above all deepening and updating Marx’s critique of political economy.”
To his credit, no one’s likely to say ‘Ah, that old cliché. That’s always wheeled out in cases of sexual abuse’.
Maybe if a leading SWP member was accused of battering a pensioner to rob her purse, he’d reply “Marx was adamant that the 1848 revolutions in Europe represented a final break between the emergent working class and capitalism. Can I go now?”
lol
good work on the cult impulse. Im getting the feeling we're entering the era of big tent leftism
Crow posted:“The theoretical development of Marxism requires above all deepening and updating Marx’s critique of political economy.”
To his credit, no one’s likely to say ‘Ah, that old cliché. That’s always wheeled out in cases of sexual abuse’.
”lol
good work on the cult impulse. Im getting the feeling we're entering the era of big tent leftism
yeah i was talking about this with our now departed queen a few nights ago. more people should start going to their meetings in a confrontational way, imo if only to save/connect with the utterly bewildered first-second and third-timers who are about to reenter apathy and alienation after their first tentative search for Something Different. the trots ingratiate and then lie in wait to do nothing at all. they fester for a decade looking at each other across conference rooms until something like the rape scandal happens. meanwhile, Dem Socialists get to work on propping up the big tent you mention.
SariBari posted:yeah i was talking about this with our now departed queen a few nights ago. more people should start going to their meetings in a confrontational way, imo if only to save/connect with the utterly bewildered first-second and third-timers who are about to reenter apathy and alienation after their first tentative search for Something Different. the trots ingratiate and then lie in wait to do nothing at all. they fester for a decade looking at each other across conference rooms until something like the rape scandal happens. meanwhile, Dem Socialists get to work on propping up the big tent you mention.
i work with a lot of swpers now but i also used to be very confrontational a few years back with them
the working with them method kind of works better to a certain extent as long as your also open about criticizing them in a more to their face out of sight out of ego way
stops sectarianism and keeps debate going cos before it just used to be that we built things independently then tried to make it broader to expand the campaign and then they would walk in and semi take it over or at least make it so shit to operate it in that the movement collapsed in on itself
its hard as fuck to poach them though because no one else really has anything else going on so your kind of asking them to leave an organisation they already semi hate but also has resources and space for education even if those resources are wankly distributed and directed plus the education is fucking awful
then with the people who are already on the periphery you can like keep them on your side but its a constant struggle between the fact that in the end its still the swp lot who run alot of shit especially since the uk left is so union centric and they are in with them
its very funny watching this entire scandal explode though their are lots of confused faces and bad analysis going on because their views are a hodgepodge of lenin and trotsky forced like a square peg into the round whole of the material conditions of the movement in the uk
SovietFriends posted:the working with them method kind of works better to a certain extent as long as your also open about criticizing them in a more to their face out of sight out of ego way
stops sectarianism and keeps debate going cos before it just used to be that we built things independently then tried to make it broader to expand the campaign and then they would walk in and semi take it over or at least make it so shit to operate it in that the movement collapsed in on itself
its hard as fuck to poach them though because no one else really has anything else going on so your kind of asking them to leave an organisation they already semi hate but also has resources and space for education even if those resources are wankly distributed and directed plus the education is fucking awful
thanks for talking about your experience working against and with them. i always seem to have one good friend in the ISO that is clinging it to for the reasons you say; they half-hate it but feel like it's the only measure they can take in a place like Texas. i come from a traditional labor organizing background and frankly know more people with better understandings of their own politics and better contacts than a lot of my friends who have been in the ISO because of that. their organizing model needs to be destroyed but i dunno if its possible to do so in the next few years. i will prob stay confrontational in a comradely way while staying open like you suggest for now.
SariBari posted:thanks for talking about your experience working against and with them. i always seem to have one good friend in the ISO that is clinging it to for the reasons you say; they half-hate it but feel like it's the only measure they can take in a place like Texas. i come from a traditional labor organizing background and frankly know more people with better understandings of their own politics and better contacts than a lot of my friends who have been in the ISO because of that. their organizing model needs to be destroyed but i dunno if its possible to do so in the next few years. i will prob stay confrontational in a comradely way while staying open like you suggest for now.
the swp actually split today haha
plus they have moved to an organisational in line with what i am after
plus at a local level a structure is being created exactly what i have been saying for ages though saying is a term for discussions so its synthesis with some swp comrades i have been talking with
its a network style structure so nice experiment to see how this all works out since it might just collapse into a useless talking shop but at least were trying a new system which allows synthesis with organisations as much as it allows openess
good news though plus now i have space to criticse everyone wholesale so above posts diplomatic necessity is gone!