if leadership spins, step up the campaign. email your copy to everyone in their local, cc national (if youve got it?).
trots understand formality, at least in my experience, and motioning towards the proper channels will help.
pissle people probably know their shit though especially locally so id defer to yours.
shriekingviolet posted:should i post a memorial to My Dead Org (and actually follow up with an effort post this time) y/n
Im interested in this too, practical lessons from the everyday are more valuable than 100 books though obviously this has to already be situated in Marxist Leninist theory for the significant events to rise out of the basic substance of experience in the first place. I have no shortage of books right now but I'm lacking the everyday.
(not my personal problem, but does seem to be real issue for a good number of American would be communists)
herbsaint posted:here's the real question: is it better to join the DSA if you have no other local alternatives or just do nothing organization wise to avoid shitlibs?
(not my personal problem, but does seem to be real issue for a good number of American would be communists)
Hal Draper wrote a thing once for independent leftists without an organizational home where he said people should try to be 'hangers-on'. Like, go to meetings for things, support what you can, don't join anything you don't feel comfortable with, but keep talking to people and building up your activism so you don't get overly isolated.
That is probably what I would do in America, until, obviously, we can build the basis for the North American Marxist-Leninist Bolshevik Alliance, the hyperleft eurohoxhaist organization of our dreams.
herbsaint posted:here's the real question: is it better to join the DSA if you have no other local alternatives or just do nothing organization wise to avoid shitlibs?
(not my personal problem, but does seem to be real issue for a good number of American would be communists)
DSA is going to always be infested with liberals but it does have the word socialist in the name and so attracts people that are wanting to do work other than just with the democratic party. it's a good place to start radicalizing sympathetic people and helping build a broad based worker's movement. generally speaking it's a big tent and you don't have to do any work you aren't comfortable with.
DSA is attracting a lot of political newbies right now and i think that's a good place to be involved with if you're a leftist with a solid grasp of your politics and want to help build consciousness to a broader audience than what you can normally reach through smaller cadre type groups.
Urbandale posted:dsa is great to meet new people. dont be too outwardly vocal about being leninist. people are getting kicked from locals but only in places where it seems like national leadership is. which sorta shows they have no organizational control over their affiliate branches
it seems like national has almost no control over anything. im a founding member of our organizing committee from last year and we were able to set our own bylaws, removed sections about not allowing democratic centralist members of other orgs, and have multiple members that are active in other leninist orgs. we've made a point of keeping dsa in coalition with all the other leftist groups that aren't sectarian to the point they refuse to work with us. we've been able to maintain a fairly left left tone to the meetings and are rapidly growing (with only a couple old timer hold outs that are less radical). lots of young people are coming through and i'm hoping it's going to be fertile ground.
i definitely sympathize with the view that working with liberals just poisons and undermines the org but im not sure that the other groups i've worked with have the ability to reach people the same way dsa does. end of the day i think the time right now is to start broad base recruiting. hopefully we have enough members that are leninist oriented enough to keep the message clear though.
i'm a pragmatist at heart about this stuff and i'll encourage even the dsa social dems that want to work within the dem party. maybe they can create inner turmoil for the dems at the very least while we work on organizing outside the party.
getfiscal posted:I believe the anti-'democratic centralist' bylaws are there primarily so they can eject members/sections that get completely taken over by a party that just wants to colonize the DSA, which is a pretty standard clause in most broad-based organizations. Obviously a democratic centralist organization has similar by-laws because... that's the point of a democratic centralist organization. You can come up with similar things just by saying you can't speak on behalf of the organization in a way that goes against stated policy or something, then kick out anyone who says something you disagree with publicly. Organizations are sorta weird... but hell, you gotta join one.
Yeah those sorts of statement of unity/values bylaws are more or less necessary in some form in any public organization. It's not just a means of neutering dissent by actual leftists, it also protects from right wing entryist sabotage tactics which are not unheard of, especially against smaller orgs. The context of them varies depending on the organization of course, stripping out the DSA's legal justification to resist your radicalization efforts is a good choice.
The Chinese party takes a different position towards itself. China has built socialism and ended exploitation, but it is now in a primary stage of socialism which will last one hundred years. At the primary stage, the economy is now a socialist market economy, the more rigorous planning being an error caused principally by Mao's deviation from his own principles and the associated political errors of the party.
But the economies are quite similar - if anything, the Vietnamese economy has a more distinct state sector (or at least did until recently). Now as an organization, it would be odd if the Vietnamese party didn't take a position on that issue, especially if it wanted to police its own members from rightist deviations. But I'm not sure how you can reasonably maintain open debates over those issues in such a way that prevents revisionism while also being open enough that like, even in the most general terms, China and Vietnam could talk about their relative positions in economic history. I mean presumably China would consider Vietnam in the primary stage of socialism then? Or would Vietnam not consider China having a socialist economy? It breaks my break to think this through.
Edited by odobenidae ()
autopsyturvey posted:I want to join an org but in not sure if my local dsas very active or good what should I do
where are you located i can help you find out. also if you have 4 friends you can start an organizing committee yourself if a local isn't around yet. and honestly dsa is looking like the fastest growing org out there right now. it's a very good time to get some good consciousness built among people that are realizing the system has failed them.
i'm finding even in places that seem apathetic people are looking for something to join so if you don't see something, start something.
getfiscal posted:I was thinking about 'statement of unity' sort of stuff the other day when I was discussing China and Vietnam with a friend. Apparently in Vietnam, while the Vietnamese party obviously considers the country 'socialist' in a broad sense, they don't consider the economy to be socialist yet in a technical sense. Rather Vietnam has a market economy which is oriented towards building socialism.
The Chinese party takes a different position towards itself. China has built socialism and ended exploitation, but it is now in a primary stage of socialism which will last one hundred years. At the primary stage, the economy is now a socialist market economy, the more rigorous planning being an error caused principally by Mao's deviation from his own principles and the associated political errors of the party.
But the economies are quite similar - if anything, the Vietnamese economy has a more distinct state sector (or at least did until recently). Now as an organization, it would be odd if the Vietnamese party didn't take a position on that issue, especially if it wanted to police its own members from rightist deviations. But I'm not sure how you can reasonably maintain open debates over those issues in such a way that prevents revisionism while also being open enough that like, even in the most general terms, China and Vietnam could talk about their relative positions in economic history. I mean presumably China would consider Vietnam in the primary stage of socialism then? Or would Vietnam not consider China having a socialist economy? It breaks my break to think this through.
This 2014 review of the Chinese literature suggests that Chinese writing on the topic accepts the point of view of Vietnam as a "socialist‐oriented market economy" with the possible future emergence of socialism with Vietnamese characteristics. The 2008 joint statement by the two countries' governments is carefully worded to refer to China as making "fresh progress in developing socialism with Chinese characteristics" while referring to Vietnamese socialism in the future tense, "to achieve their goal of building a strong, prosperous, fair, democratic and culturally advanced socialist country." In practical terms this seems to mean that China presents the results of Vietnam's changes as support for its own while being careful to formulate its language to fit Vietnam's own official characterization of its policies, while Vietnam officially accepts China as a socialist country in the act of further developing socialism along its own characteristics. This may not be new information for you but that's their respective lines right now.
Edited by Urbandale ()
getfiscal posted:China has built socialism and ended exploitation
what
i'll admit i'm pretty ignorant about china but just a brief look at this makes me wonder how you came to that conclusion
From its founding in 1949 until late 1978, the People's Republic of China was a Soviet-style centrally planned economy. Following Mao's death in 1976 and the consequent end of the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and the new Chinese leadership began to reform the economy and move towards a more market-oriented mixed economy under one-party rule. Agricultural collectivization was dismantled and farmlands privatized, while foreign trade became a major new focus, leading to the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Inefficient state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were restructured and unprofitable ones were closed outright, resulting in massive job losses. Modern-day China is mainly characterized as having a market economy based on private property ownership, and is one of the leading examples of state capitalism. The state still dominates in strategic "pillar" sectors such as energy production and heavy industries, but private enterprise has expanded enormously, with around 30 million private businesses recorded in 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China#Economic_history_and_growth
