daddyholes posted:

Another possible point of trying to "recoup political relevance" through reformism is to create a special purpose vehicle for immediate financing of revolutionary activities (likely foreign ones) with the tacit approval of funders but I wonder if there is a single left party remaining in the countries discussed with the integrity, courage or funding base to pull that off anymore

yeah money laundering isnt easy

getfiscal posted:

i was reading an article about "dumpies" yesterday. dumpies are people who expect to be part of an ideological state apparatus but have been dumped out by some factor. lawyers who can't find jobs, people with arts degrees working at cafes, people crushed down by student loans, simple government office workers unlikely to be promoted, freelance writers, mental health cases like me, stuff like that.

dumpies probably are part of a continuum which includes the whole academic and NGO world (the social economy). the social economy exploded in the neoliberal era as the state retreated, partly as a survival mechanism both for people at the bottom but also for middle class types.

the article i read sort of focused on how dumpies and the social economy were mobilized for the sawant campaign along with working class types. and he points out that a lot of these people were explicitly critical of occupy (from the right) and seemed more interested in recuperation of the existing system from their class viewpoint. that is, i think he meant they wanted the government to spend more on social centers, academic institutions, etc. - which creates jobs, but very specific kinds of jobs.

i think it'd be interesting to work in an analysis of first-worldism into that, and also about the social bases of fascism and so on. i think part of what it misses is that people do get (probably) real gains from that sort of activism, too. like the NGO sector does a lot of good in itself, it's not just total ideology. just like a doctor at a private hospital is still performing surgeries that save lives and so on. i think this is an important issue because it's these dumpies and social economy people (the lower ranks of the petty-bourgeoisie) who tend to dominate the left in the first world. i guess that ties into discipline's article about working class voices.

this sounds like its along the lines of what ive been thinking for a while about superfluous academics and the politics they end up with and such.

SariBari posted:

plenty of labor in the midwest, go radicalize some locals brah

lol nobody labors in the midwest and that's a fact

getfiscal posted:

This thread is revisionist and I am engaging in self-rectification to purge myself of these petty bourgeois tendencies. Long live Stalin!

hmm. I have decided to repudiate my repudiation in a most Hegelian manner

discipline posted:

hey babyhuey what do you do for a living

Pig work mostly.

e: Whoops, wrong account

daddyholes posted:

i do not actually think there is no left in america. Bring on the downvotes

There's a left in the sense that 'left of center' is a thing.