i'll go back to playing FTL now kay.
i'll see if i can find it later.
honestly some measure of seizure of political power would be much easier, i dont think the black panthers were doing their breakfasts just because kids were hungry, they were doing this stuff specifically with how it helped them in their political aims.
it's like the problem with occupy soup kitchens, they were actually a massive drain, something that the state should be doing anyway, and got away from what should have been the real aim.
i'm hardass about this or whatever but i really dont see any other way. basically the complete opposite to the baby finland position.
GoldenLionTamarin posted:personally im in favor of dissolving the union and turning each state into a sovereign nation
Sounds like the plot of the alt-history air combat game crimson skies.
HenryKrinkle posted:not sure if this is relevant but i once posted a thread in ye olde SA-LF about leftist politics at the municipal level & it had some interesting perspectives IIRC.
i'll see if i can find it later.
that was noted white supremacist story
jools posted:honestly some measure of seizure of political power would be much easier
how would you go about doing that
ilmdge posted:What I'd recommend, and I think discipline would agree with me, is voting for Barack Obama.
hmm well that makes sense. thanks.
jools posted:tbh i'm really sceptical of the idea of just building to ameliorate shit that will inevitably always get worse. like there is this stuff going on in venezuela but its against a backdrop of a massive political effort to seize power, and a leadership that is willing to act on behalf of the dispossessed.
honestly some measure of seizure of political power would be much easier, i dont think the black panthers were doing their breakfasts just because kids were hungry, they were doing this stuff specifically with how it helped them in their political aims.
it's like the problem with occupy soup kitchens, they were actually a massive drain, something that the state should be doing anyway, and got away from what should have been the real aim.
i'm hardass about this or whatever but i really dont see any other way. basically the complete opposite to the baby finland position.
this is explicit in the writings of all the black panther leaders, I have no idea what alternative there is other than NGO moralism. the fact that IWW soup kitchens, CPUSA schools, socialist sports clubs, proletarian olympics are inconceivable to the left these days when it was the main form of politics for a a century shows how far we've fallen. and the fact that non-state organization is presented as something new shows we haven't even learned from the fall. oh well, eternal recurrence, the left will emerge again.
when zizek says our task today is to read, I hope this is what he's talking about, people don't even know the history of their own movements.
getfiscal posted:i think it's good that you have a lot of energy to put behind a project but maybe break it down to the base parts or something. like obviously there is a massive amount of research about southern poverty and countless social groups trying to overcome it. you also need to survive and you didn't sound to excited about moving back south recently. also if left politics was fairly simple then it would have won already. so, like zizzy bear says, fall in love with hard work.
we need to come up with some action items to get past the theoretical phase
I personally think this is why anti-imperialism is so important, it is simultaneously a transitional demand (capitalism needs imperialism and non-capitalist markets to suck dry) and a practical community building effort (as we can see from the election of George Galloway which was entirely grassroots). However that's a little too vague, I'm interested to hear what people think tactically and what works in the usa.
You sit all day long and ponder possible venues for a revolution that is completely outside your grasp, on top of that, you believe for some reason you are a future leader and architect of this future global revolutionary movement. These are vanities and you are insane.
If you want to make the world a better place you should volunteer in homeless shelters, adopt a dog who is about to be put to death and work about being a more pleasant person in general and harboring less violent genocidal fantasies.
sorry discipline.
ilmdge posted:getfiscal posted:
jools posted:
honestly some measure of seizure of political power would be much easier
how would you go about doing that
What I'd recommend, and I think discipline would agree with me, is voting for Barack Obama.
a-freakin-greed-o
Transient_Grace posted:huey you're the classic example of a dumb fuck who is so alienated from his own humanity you fail to realistically grasp your actual limitations, both in general as a 'single person without extraordinary resources' and specifically as an individual who is incredibly uncharismatic, is batshit insane and is probably even more boring to listen to in real life.
You sit all day long and ponder possible venues for a revolution that is completely outside your grasp, on top of that, you believe for some reason you are a future leader and architect of this future global revolutionary movement. These are vanities and you are insane.
If you want to make the world a better place you should volunteer in homeless shelters, adopt a dog who is about to be put to death and work about being a more pleasant person in general and harboring less violent genocidal fantasies.
is there some context to this or what? its p. uncalled for to interrupt the one decent discussion here with this sort of thing. there are plenty of other threads to do a callout in
use some minority status to get them into a powerful institution like stanford or ivy league schools yet in touch with the american disposesed. hopefully a grassroots wave will push them into power to start the grand plan while the rest of the nation, unaware of this conditioning, will follow like sheep
thirdplace posted:since i read graeber i've really been captived by the idea of his everyday communism. i feel like the most natural and reciliant form of socialism would be one grown on it. take the existing social bubbles wherein people relate to each other as people rather than systemically and make that shit bigger. fuck dunbar, dunbar's a prick
this is a bad idea because its never actually been the basis of anything vaguely successful
guidoanselmi posted:i think the best con is to make some sort of a manchurian candidate. get him from some god awful place and slowly develop an environment around him to foster radical leftist thoughts during his impressionable years while at the same time grooming him for power.
use some minority status to get them into a powerful institution like stanford or ivy league schools yet in touch with the american disposesed. hopefully a grassroots wave will push them into power to start the grand plan while the rest of the nation, unaware of this conditioning, will follow like sheep
won't people demand their birth certificate, or uni transcripts?
HenryKrinkle posted:not sure if this is relevant but i once posted a thread in ye olde SA-LF about leftist politics at the municipal level & it had some interesting perspectives IIRC.
i'll see if i can find it later.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3363565
jools posted:thirdplace posted:since i read graeber i've really been captived by the idea of his everyday communism. i feel like the most natural and reciliant form of socialism would be one grown on it. take the existing social bubbles wherein people relate to each other as people rather than systemically and make that shit bigger. fuck dunbar, dunbar's a prick
this is a bad idea because its never actually been the basis of anything vaguely successful
sure it has, it's just that they were all based on religions
Edited by thirdplace ()
VoxNihili posted:is there some context to this or what? its p. uncalled for to interrupt the one decent discussion here with this sort of thing. there are plenty of other threads to do a callout in
well, it's not completely off topic
bourgeois society sees itself as a totality. as such, it sees itself as natural and rational, while attempts to ignore this essential rationality are seen as a dangerous other. however, the dangerous other is entirely determined by rational factors - their crimes are comprehensible within a certain framework (they are jihadis because they are angry young males, or serial murderers because of brain chemical problems, or some other label). likewise, any attempt to fundamentally transform the system from within is entirely foreclosed - liberal politics can form the tone of a capitalist society within certain limits, but it cannot overthrow capitalist society. likewise, NGO-style work is simply a linear solution to a geometric problem - global collective problems require global collective solutions.
this perceived surface steadiness is constantly rumbling with earthquakes and eruptions from the real base of the system: the fact that capitalist society needs to exploit workers to reproduce itself. this constant search for new surplus value forces the world to fracture itself into endless material subdivisions - class, race, gender, etc. - which are used as dimensions of repression. the problem is that not all of these divisions have the reasonable ability to stop the system in its tracks. only people who create the means of sustenance for capitalism have the ability to stop the core parts of value flows. this means the people who grow the food, make the clothes, use the tools and so on. everyone else can cause short-circuits in the local channels of capitalism but they cannot stop the system from rerouting around them.
however, this mass collective revolt (an unlimited political general strike) can only survive if the systems of ideological and coercive repression are neutralized in some way. knowing this, most "radical-minded" people work within the existing capitalist totality - they use the channels they know will work to make their lives better. however, for any radical that knows that capitalism is an impossible state to maintain - there is no balance to be found within it - then the self-defence of the strike becomes their central task. this is foreclosed as well in most situations - imagine if you tried to defend a picket line in the US with a rifle today (even though this happened in the US and Europe in the past!).
the solution to this dilemma is that the capitalist totality does not in fact exist as it sees itself. it projects an all-inclusive, complete visgage but it can never fully integrate its constituent parts because it depends on their exploitation. as such, the process of exploitation causes weak links in the system - underdeveloped regions, abandoned factories, states weakened by imperialism, etc. the aim of socialists is to seize these weak links and demonstrate to the masses that they can use these nodes to control their own societies in their own interests.
however, the above must involve being prepared (especially in theory) to actually control the flow of events. that is, the aim is not agitation (simply encouraging revolution), but rather to make revolution oneself - to "pick up the rifle" and not to put it down until the revolution is over. this means that the state is essentially a weapon, it cannot be conceived as a "state of the whole people" within a globe that remains fundamentally capitalist. this means that socialists must argue against people who want fundamentally the same sort of society - liberal-democratic with a market framework - and dress it up as socialism. if you notice, that's virtually all socialists who compete in elections, because they are trying to change capitalism through reforms - even if they call themselves anticapitalists.
the problem is that there is no institution or policy that can guarantee a revolution will stay on track given the enormous pressures within a capitalist world to throw it off track. this is partly because most people are asking for reasonable things - they want an end to corruption, they want quality food and consumer goods, they don't want to be bossed around at work - and no socialist society has been able to consistently provide those things. beyond that, socialism may solve some problems, but it certainly has some of its own in terms of organizing a well-functioning economy. yet most socialists, even socialist economists, consider the actual functioning of socialism to be largely a minor issue. however, we must continue to try! for there is nothing else to do!
red salute, baby huey p. newton!
discipline posted:I really want to write a whole book about this because there's a lot to it, it's just really hard to do when you're living on a couch and have no personal wealth to speak of.
maybe if u exerted some financial responsibility and self-control rather than being a bourgeois member of the jet-set routinely flying hundreds of miles across oceans to indulge a hedonistic lifestyle in london, new york, the west bank, and the gaza strip, you'd be able to afford to write your marxist screed. get a job, hippie.
discipline posted:the per capita income in the USA is clearly kept incredibly high in certain places, the power concentration as well. there are clearly cores, peripheries and semi-peripheries. has anyone ever written about this? I'm interested in writing something on it as a long term project, focusing on certain cities as case studies.
harvey maybe? doesn't his newish urban cities book sort of cover this topic?