At this point I don't know how feasible that is

  • pppp1000 [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Yeah good luck. I see a lot of "leftists" spreading the word nordic socialism lmao. Socialism is the good things done in white nordic countries. Communism is the scary thing done in Cuba, USSR, Yugoslavia and China.

      • bewts [he/him,comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        in order to move past

        People like V***h scoop them up now and they don't actually have to move past.

        • zeal0telite [he/him,they/them]
          ·
          edit-2
          4 years ago

          He's currently doing "think of the children" bullshit regarding Pride so maybe one day he'll just not be taken seriously at all.

            • zeal0telite [he/him,they/them]
              ·
              edit-2
              4 years ago

              What if we did social conservativism... but woke?

              "I am very giving you advice to help your cause, The Gays™. Please, act how I want you to act and you'll get everything you ever wanted."

              It's genuinely like watching the Biden/Bernie shit again where they're like "they'll use Bernie being a socialist against him". Bitch, they do that shit anyway. Not being a Republican makes you a Maoist and daring to say you're LGBT+ is corrupting children. Who gives a fuck?

  • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Party organization + good messaging has a snowballing effect through recruitment. It looks impossible because it feels like you'd have to personally convince hundreds of people, but that's not the case.

    The difficult part is joining/creating parties willing to have coherence and discipline, but luckily that's a lot more tractable than convincing every lib to stop being lib.

    Also, you'd be surprised at how amenable people are to large swaths of socialist thinking, they've just never been exposed to it. Literally never. Those are opportunities.

  • MeatfuckerDidNothing [they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    You need 10 percent of the population to be coherent you just need a coherent vanguard party and people willing to be radicalized

    • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The problem is that even 1% of the population is well over a million people, and they have to be positioned correctly over a continent-spanning country. Any way you slice it, we're looking at something worth calling a mass movement.

      • Pezevenk [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        4 years ago

        Oh gee who'd have thought that you need a mass movement for socialism and you can't do it with 500 people on some online forum...

        • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          The point is that while the idea of a vanguard party sounds small, in reality it'd have to be something like ten times the size of the DSA at minimum.

          • Express [any,none/use name]
            ·
            4 years ago

            It probably just needs geographic concentration. A small group of dedicated people in one area have a bigger impact than a large group spread out across the country.

  • kulak_inspektor [comrade/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Start by dismantling the empire. Then get everyone a real job instead of realty, "doing personal fitness", or whatever fake jobs most people here have

    • TeethOrCoat [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      This is like a chicken and egg thing isn't it? Like do we need to get socialism to dismantle Empire or do we need to dismantle Empire to get socialism?

      • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
        ·
        4 years ago

        We need to get socialism first, because Americans are so ignorant/apathetic on foreign policy issues.

        You can make Americans socialists, and socialism has all sorts of natural pathways to anti-imperialism. But trying to make non-socialist Americans anti-imperialists is much more difficult because for the most part people don't know or care.

        • TeethOrCoat [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          The problem here is, what's more likely? The US left right now doesn't inspire very much confidence. A large chunk of them even seem to be fanning the flames of war. On the anti-imperialist side, we see some promising developments in Latin America.

          • MarxMadness [comrade/them]
            ·
            4 years ago

            It depends on how you define "the left," but I don't see a lot of fanning the flames. There's barely anything worth calling that from the Bernie/AOC crowd (you'll get some "China Bad," sure, but that's a lot different from calling for war), and there's less and less the further left you go.

            As for the anti-imperialist developments in Latin America, they're great, but they're not a significant factor in U.S. politics.

            • TeethOrCoat [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              OK, I'm not from or in the US, so I don't have a complete or accurate idea of how the left looks nowadays. My knowledge comes from either people I know IRL who have been there or, most of the time, observing the various online interactions and media depictions. When I say fanning the flames, I don't just mean a vague "China Bad" of course. I mean the types who go along with Empire and spread their propaganda, call others tankies, dengists, genocide deniers for expressing skepticism. This could be a common thing IRL, it could be an uncommon thing IRL, I don't know. I am concerned though, that 45% of the US believes PRC is the greatest threat.

              As for the anti-imperialist developments in Latin America, they’re great, but they’re not a significant factor in U.S. politics.

              If the reason for the lack of revolutionary activity is due to the appeasement brought about by the exploitation of the global south, then it stands to reason that to achieve socialism in the imperial core the exploited have to break away first. My feeling is the exploited are more likely to break away before any socialist movement finds success in the US.

            • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Online the attitude is generally good - solidarity with Palestine and new governments in Latin America, swatting down China b.s., etc. IRL, it's hard to say. I don't talk politics at work (they're all right-wing anyway), and I have been to any sort of "Lefty" events irl, but I'm expecting a lot of both sides bullshit, "Xinjiang is sooooo bad" remarks, etc. from normies.

            • TeethOrCoat [none/use name]
              ·
              4 years ago

              Well, you can't expect the rest of the world to sit on their hands waiting for US socialists to get their act together. I'm not saying that you can't build a strong socialist movement in the US before dismantling Empire (in fact I would welcome it since it'll likely make it easier for all anti-imperialists), it's just from what I've observed of the state of the left in the country, I think it's unlikely to happen. It's up to US comrades ultimately if the country gets taken over by right wing populists.

      • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Pretty sure the empire will dismantle itself, like a helicopter that shakes itself apart. We just have to be there to take the empire-helicopter wreckage and make it into a socialism train before the fascists just make the wreck fly again by strapping rockets to it.

        • TeethOrCoat [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Maybe, but I'm of the mind that there's no roadmap, clear or vague, to the dismantling of Empire right now. What the US is trending towards right now is fascism, priming the population for war by creating an external enemy. I have very little confidence in the US left to reverse this trend.

          • Bluegrass_Buddhist [none/use name]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            I have very little confidence in the US left to reverse this trend

            Oh we absolutely won't. The trillions of dollars of weapons the state has stockpiled will either be used in an external war or an internal violent suppression of dissent, maybe both, but one way or another they're getting used. But with things trending the way they are now, I think that conflict will likely shake the empire apart.

            With a lot of luck, the experience of living through it will also finally be enough to galvanize a tangible domestic socialist movement.

  • Rem [she/her]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Is this not the definition of idealism

        • videogame [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          4 years ago

          There's no class that gains from the work of someone else

              • whygodwhy [none/use name]
                ·
                edit-2
                4 years ago

                So one group that does 70% of the work still only gets 50% of the reward while the group that does 30% of the work get the remaining 50%? How is this a situation where "Everyone gets exactly what they put in" ?

                • videogame [he/him]
                  hexagon
                  ·
                  4 years ago

                  You were the one who said that, not me. As long as everyone is working I don't see the need to means-test who deserves more of the resources.

                  • whygodwhy [none/use name]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    No, you said a classless society is when "Everyone gets exactly what they put in", which you further clarified as "resources are distributed equally". These 2 statements are logically incoherent, unless everyone puts in equal work. Another confusion comes from how exactly is "work put in" measured. Do you see how incoherent and confused your understanding of communism is?

                    • videogame [he/him]
                      hexagon
                      ·
                      4 years ago

                      I still didn't say the first thing but whatever just give me something to read

                      • whygodwhy [none/use name]
                        ·
                        4 years ago

                        You said "There’s no class that gains from the work of someone else", the logical conclusion from that is that everyone gets only the reward of the work they did. The moment a single group of people get the work of someone else, instead of just the work they did, you will have what is a class (as defined by you and not by communists)

                        whatever just give me something to read

                        You made this thread smugly talking about how Americans have incoherent understanding of politics. The first thing I suggest is having some humility. As for something to read, you should read "Communist Manifesto" , "Wage Labour and Capital", "Value, Price and Profit", "Critique of the Gotha Programme", Capital Vol 1 all by Marx/Engels and found on www.marxists.org . Then you can also read some ICP party texts(falsely attributed to Bordiga), like "The Fundamentals of Revolutionary Communism" , " ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1957/fundamentals.htm ), "The original content of the communist program" ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1958/marxism-property.htm ). To deprogram you brain from Stalinist and "AES" ideology, read "Dialogue with Stalin" ( https://www.marxists.org/archive/bordiga/works/1952/stalin.htm ).