tears posted:whats changed from last time that wouls mean berny sander would win a democrat nomination
maybe the fact that the dem establishment isnt united around a single candidate? there seem to be like 3 or 4 establishment type figures all running and i dont think any of them have the name recognition of sanders. i mean im not necessarily convinced he'll get it either but it seems more likely than last time
I see in my future ... a blimp. A blimp with one word printed on it: MATH. It leisurely cruises over my neighborhood as a small plane enters the scene and begins flying in a pattern trailing white smoke. The letters take shape: YANG.
Red_Canadian posted:wouldn't basically any candidate for american president have to deal with the deep state? i'm continuing my argument, that a social democratic government is doomed to fail, because it makes promises that it would not be able to keep. it was the foreign policy especially that caused the collapse of the social democratic government in Russia in 1917, since they were opposed to ending the war. it was this betrayal that led to the massive increase in support for the bolsheviks, as people thought that was what the revolution was for.
by showing the contradictions between what the march revolution promised, and what it delivered, the bolsheviks were able to gain the mass base that allowed them to successfully launch the first successful communist revolution.
lenin wrote against the dangers of ultra-leftism, and i fear that is what is what is preventing the rhizzone from gaining wider support.
what do you feel are the correct actions to take for american leftists, to work towards a successful revolution that is internationalist? keeping yourself aloof of the people has been a failing strategy in america for years. if you feel that any movement towards communism is doomed to fail in the united states, i can understand that, but as my country tends to follow american politics, as well as the fact that american governments have materially affected politics in it as well, hopefully you can understand why i tend to follow their politics and work towards illustrating the contradictions that exist between their rhetoric and their actions.
You already mentioned that this discussion originally occurred around Greece. That's understandable, despite the generic nature of the question SYRIZA was the most radical party to win in a mostly first world country in a long time and the referendum on austerity showed there was real struggle within the party. What happened?
https://greekcitytimes.com/2019/02/19/latest-poll-new-democracy-way-ahead-of-syriza/?amp
Nothing. SYRIZA took the place of PASOK, electoral support for the fascists and communists remains where it was, the referendum's results were ignored to no real consequence, and the left breakaway faction of the party did nothing except reveal their impotence. We are a long way from building a party with the size and influence of the KKE, let alone the Bolsheviks after the February revolution, so let's talk about reality because I think Greece is an illustrative example. Especially because no one who told us to support SYRIZA ever said they were wrong as far as I'm aware. Meanwhile, the KKE has done some excellent analysis explaining why they believe what they do based on real historical analysis.
https://inter.kke.gr/en/articles/Conclusions-from-KKEs-armed-struggle-during-WWII-and-from-the-struggle-of-DSE-Democratic-Army-of-Greece-through-the-scope-of-the-strategy-of-the-international-communist-movement/
As for what to do, the point of that Marx quote is that if you take what appears as "actual" to be rational, as Hegel did, you can never think beyond it. The first thing is to stop conflating voting with politics, your vote doesn't matter and your party's support for a bourgeois candidate or "boycott" is still 100 x 0. That's the "actual" from which cynically hitching a ride on social democracy and thinking you've done something appears rational. But that's not the real which emerges out of the contradictions within this state of affairs. The only use of elections is to present the communist alternative openly and without having to spend too many resources. That this message does not appear to resonate with the "masses" is obvious, if it did the revolution would be immanent. Lenin did not support Kerensky, he opposed him, so I'm not sure what your argument even is.
trakfactri posted:
yang is the president amerika deserves
babyhueypnewton posted:As for what to do, the point of that Marx quote is that if you take what appears as "actual" to be rational, as Hegel did, you can never think beyond it. The first thing is to stop conflating voting with politics, your vote doesn't matter and your party's support for a bourgeois candidate or "boycott" is still 100 x 0. That's the "actual" from which cynically hitching a ride on social democracy and thinking you've done something appears rational. But that's not the real which emerges out of the contradictions within this state of affairs.
read his critique of the philosophy of right yesterday and i'm working through on the jewish question so this is relevant
i don't think i'm going to any bernie rallies if they come around. learning more about first nations (specifically anishinaabe) issues and showing concrete solidarity where i can seems a lot more important from where i'm at.
marx really has a way of just. dissolving things, unknoting things, demystifying things. systemically reading his stuff and taking notes is actually helping lots w my mental health (which i guess is why we're here)
psychicdriver posted:systemically reading his stuff and taking notes is actually helping lots w my mental health (which i guess is why we're here)
smart, i too love to make notes in a big note book, memory is so weak, notes are good
trakfactri posted:
It's inappropriate not to post the MARS, HALL, and ERS signs from the sequence
psychicdriver posted:babyhueypnewton posted:As for what to do, the point of that Marx quote is that if you take what appears as "actual" to be rational, as Hegel did, you can never think beyond it. The first thing is to stop conflating voting with politics, your vote doesn't matter and your party's support for a bourgeois candidate or "boycott" is still 100 x 0. That's the "actual" from which cynically hitching a ride on social democracy and thinking you've done something appears rational. But that's not the real which emerges out of the contradictions within this state of affairs.
read his critique of the philosophy of right yesterday and i'm working through on the jewish question so this is relevant
i don't think i'm going to any bernie rallies if they come around. learning more about first nations (specifically anishinaabe) issues and showing concrete solidarity where i can seems a lot more important from where i'm at.
marx really has a way of just. dissolving things, unknoting things, demystifying things. systemically reading his stuff and taking notes is actually helping lots w my mental health (which i guess is why we're here)
On The Jewish Question is basically one big critique of identity politics, it's more relevant than ever though obviously both works have to be read in the context of the mature Marx. Not surprisingly a defense of identity politics by attacking its language and Marx's own youthful relationship to his Judiasm is equally relevant to liberals.
You may enjoy chapter 5 in this book:
https://libcom.org/files/Wendy_Brown_States_of_Injury_Power_and_Freedom_in_Late_Modernity__1995.pdf
as a commentary.
as you said, KKE staying aloof of syriza has not resulting in any increase in popular support for them, and (although i would be happy to be proved wrong) the communist parties in america have not seen the massive increase in numbers the dsa has.
as marx said, "The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats(1) against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution."
that sums up my argument, and that four years on from the last time having this argument, we may need to alter what we determined in that case due to what we know now.
Red_Canadian posted:i mean, don't we as marxists have some responsibility to alter our techniques if they aren't working?
as you said, KKE staying aloof of syriza has not resulting in any increase in popular support for them, and (although i would be happy to be proved wrong) the communist parties in america have not seen the massive increase in numbers the dsa has.
as marx said, "The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats(1) against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution."
that sums up my argument, and that four years on from the last time having this argument, we may need to alter what we determined in that case due to what we know now.
It's difficult to speak about the KKE because they clearly have a lot of power in the masses beyond the electoral arena. We also do not have access to their discussions of illegal tactics which is what a revolutionary insurrection would be and in general without getting a feel for the country through living through its class struggle and deep study I can't say what the balance of forces really is. But you've already made "popular support" and electoral support interchangeable, a particularly unusual move since the DSA does not even run candidates, it merely hijacks them.
SYRIZA on the other hand constituted itself in the electoral arena and the referendum is the furthest possible point of its left-wing political strategy. Since it's failure we have only seen the electoral arena used in a negative way to protest the divergence between the labor-capital social democratic pact and the "governance" of neoliberalism such as Brexit. Attempts to save that pact from the "left" are doomed to failure and I'm not sure why you think the revolutionary left will benefit from this failure if it tailed the attempt the whole time as you are advocating. Already we have diverging beliefs though, where you believe the social democratic pact was arrived at through compromise between radical and bourgeois forces rather than the active creation of self-conscious forces who constituted their cooperation by excluding radical forces from public life. Social democracy is not the Knights of Labor, we have to take its mass national character seriously (and the idea that the USSR's existence forced it into being is silly to me, the timeline has never been clear nor the mechanism by which this conpromise occurs).
As for Marx, this argument is as old as Marxism himself, if you really believe that singular political intervention is characteristic of revolutionary Marxist strategy then you'll find yourself in Bernstein's shoes very soon. If you refuse to accept that the Paris Commune fundamentally changed the coordinates of communist political strategy, at least imperialism and the Bolshevik revolution should (though Lenin too has similar quotes if you want to reduce the essence of the revolution to temporary tactics).
Red_Canadian posted:i made an effortpost a few years ago quoting lenin about why i thought it was worthwhile to support bernie while still being somewhat critical, as a necessary step in radicalising people as they realise that socialism that doesn't take radical actions can only fail, arguing that's basically what happened in russia with the two revolutions in 1917. however, the thread consensus was that the KKE were correct, and supporting social democratic candidates is a betrayal of the working class.
although stalin did support popular fronts against fascism, so part of me still feels that it's somewhat the correct way for americans.
does democratic centralism allow for re-fighting old fights? you could argue that after trump, the calculus has changed somewhat.
it depends from situation to situation for me. obviously the DSA spending 150k on a bernie campaign "endorsement" is terrible and bad. as for myself, i only support Bernie because i think he'll mobilize more people into politics in the opposite of the FDR situation where he actually had the organized trade unions and institutional power to take control of the government and sweep up the class conscious workers into modern american civic nationalism.
Edited by serafiym ()
I just want to emphasize how weak the basic infrastructure is for anti-capitalist politics in most of the United Snakes.
I think the appeal of DSA is almost like the Shriners or something; partly a social club with added "good works." Low barriers to entry. If you're alienated, fed up with the amorphous gig economy and are looking for some structure, then the DSA is an appealing mix. Most of these people are not college kids but working adults, with 40-50 people in a room listening to a basic talk on the LTV. People don't look or act too weird. The marketing also has this aggressive optimism to it like this smiling, happy train car that is locally rooted -- almost like a sports team:
They're also able to move somewhat as a unit during demonstrations. There will be something like the Women's March which is mostly extremely bland and then several dozen people barnstorm through wearing red, flying red flags, and they have a tuba and Irish flutes and drums, and they have a lot of energy and are making a hell of a racket. Break it down to a very basic and visceral level. Anyways this doesn't have anything to do with strategy but I'm just calling it how I see it. They almost remind me of the Wide Awakes except for Bernie instead of Lincoln. I'm also not sure strong-party Leninism even applies very well in an American context at all, and that we're more like a country of political "mobs," fraternities, militias, secret societies and so on. I might be wrong, though.
Anyways, someone's gotta do it.
trakfactri posted:I think the appeal of DSA is almost like the Shriners or something; partly a social club with added "good works." Low barriers to entry.
Most of the Communist parties in the U.S. have a pre-membership farm-team organization where you can just chill and do grunt work without completing all your courses on the proper point value for Slobodan Milosevic if he were tied to a railroad track, etc.
So, you could join the Revolution Club (BAsics; up to 6 Points of Attention; solid core with a lot of elasticity on the basis of the solid core) or whiff your way down to DSA (capo's initials form doleful "BS"; social-fascist platform; donations ripen yearly into D-tier slush fund for whatever Democrat they hate the most). Some people like whatever steak thing is the best steak without me coming across as pretentious, other people prefer a banned Baltic-region line of Oreos called "Oüps! Alle Fermented!", it's a free country that way. The steak is Communism.
trakfactri posted:But what about Gloria La Riva?
tHE r H i z z o n E officially endorsed La Riva's ticket for U.S. President in 2016 in a front-page article, after "don't vote" won the voting thread by a landslide and swampman decided just to pick who he wanted instead. To be clear, both he and the rest of us did the right thing at every step of that process, and the net result was that Twitter thought we endorsed Trump because Goatstein is a troll and the world is the bridge he lives under.
The Leninist parties remind me of those islands of Orthodoxy.
trakfactri posted:I guess you could say I'm looking for a Marxist lay organization. If you pay attention you'll see these rad-trad teens who -- after playing too much Crusader Kings II -- convert to Christianity, but the Catholic Church clearly doesn't cut it for them as the lived reality is largely old-lady gossip and spaghetti dinners for the most part, which puts these converts at odds with their adopted faith community. That leaves Eastern Orthodoxy, which in practice is more like a series of islands rooted in ethnic communities with the churches serving as de facto embassies for foreign governments.
The Leninist parties remind me of those islands of Orthodoxy.
try the "answer" coalition, maybe
cars posted:Some people like whatever steak thing is the best steak without me coming across as pretentious, other people prefer a banned Baltic-region line of Oreos called "Oüps! Alle Fermented!", it's a free country that way. The steak is Communism.
Striking manifestations of the broad democratic upsurge of the masses during the early New Deal period were the many "panacea" mass agitations. These were wide movements of farmers, city middle classes, and proletarian elements, sometimes running into the millions. Generally it was the workers who gave vitality to these movements. Shaken by the deep economic crisis, these masses struck out blindly against capitalism, desperately striving for some remedy. Usually their programs were fantastically utopian, and the demagogic leaders were frequently fascist-minded, but the masses were full of democratic fighting spirit. That such confused movements could spring up testified to the ideological backwardness of the American workers and their lack of a broad political party with progressive working class leadership.
7. Share-the-Wealth: This mass movement sprang up in 1934 and spread with the rapidity characteristic of the "panacea" agitations generally. Its founder was Senator Huey P. Long of Louisiana. Long, the "kingfish," had as his main slogans, "Share the Wealth" and "Every Man a King." He proposed to take away most of the capitalists' wealth by a gigantic capital levy. The resulting $165 billion in the hands of the government he would distribute among the people, each family getting $5,000 down and each worker also being assured a yearly income of $2,500. The Share-the-Wealth movement was the most fantastic of all the panaceas and Long the most effective fascist demagogue the United States had yet seen. He set up a virtual dictatorship in Louisiana and also had a wide following among the poor farmers and workers all over the South. He was assassinated in September 1935, by a man whom he had victimized, after which his movement, fallen into the less capable hands of Gerald L. K. Smith and others, gradually disintegrated.
Generally it was the workers who gave vitality to these movements. Shaken by the deep economic crisis, these masses struck out blindly against capitalism, desperately striving for some remedy. Usually their programs were fantastically utopian, and the demagogic leaders were frequently fascist-minded, but the masses were full of democratic fighting spirit. That such confused movements could spring up testified to the ideological backwardness of the American workers and their lack of a broad political party with progressive working class leadership.
so this is what you can believe in if you havent read settlers yet
Caesura109 posted:my only take on this is that your vote for a presidential candidate as an american definitely has more of an impact on every person in my country than anyone in my country voting for their presidential candidate
yeah this is will always get me to the polls. one hundred correct theoretical arguments against electoralism < a very tiny chance of having a microscopic effect on putting the slightest restraint on the rapacious machine of american imperialism
(i will be voting for ron paul)
