its fucking hilarious when out of touch lefties just go shouting 'strike' in the streets expecting something to happen
Well, most of the unions are anti worker and not going to help them. Not that the existing ones cover any large amount of the workforce. The bizarre organizer bureaucracy the US has built up is also rudderless, now largely acting as a money pit.
So that leaves them in the position of trying to spark something spontaneously which does have a low success rate, but it isn't the zero that's being brought to the table elsewhere. I feel the same about this as I did when the chapos were crapping on the rent strike idea as being unserious, well, what was the serious thing? More editorials in indie mags? Writing a memoir? There was no other plan even proposed.
The silver lining of having so many experts who've won all of jack shit ought to be that it gives normal people a bit of confidence to go take those shots in the dark. At least nobody can say they see the target more clearly than you.
There was no other plan even proposed.
It's not a plan, it's decentralized (neoliberal) random people doing things without being attached to any program
The rent strikers at least proposed making a program and instead of either leading themselves or offering a more coherent strategy our big brained super marxist threw cold water on the idea and went on to recap david lynch movies for the billionth time. This is really the core of the problem to me. We have people who have a ton of money, who have a ton of reach, and they are perfectly content being commentators forever. This gets framed as the serious marxist thinker that for some reason needs ever more money and attention.
Then we have the naive people with no resources fucking up because they are effectively alone, having to start from scratch perpetually because most of the funding the left generates burns away on ephemeral campaigns or minting the new bourgeois of the prior group. This is effectively the group who all movement and progress within the left depends upon, but they're unserious.
Instead, I post funny 100 year old bearded men on obscure imageboards and yell about the meaning behind the sentence: "the scientific materialist communist liberalist historical anarchism Marxism leninism is actually reactionary based upon the current socio cultural historical fractional marxisional squaganal aspects of the time. I hate women." written by Vladivmir Vladivostok Valadimilfmir, 1887.
squaganal
Zelda: Faces of Evil (CD-I) : Squadala! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfO4_Y1RwZ0
i agree revolution as a meme is a nonstarter (i mean, no one actually tried to trespass on Area 51, they just had a party outside while the military police watched.) But at our current level of powerlessness, even encouraging people to imagine revolutionary action seriously is a necessary step.
Who (among the intended strikers) is taking this seriously, though? It seems needlessly dangerous to me.
Ya know, it helps if you have people organized before asking people to randomly risk losing their job. What if no one else shows up? 😒
Yeah I saw that on the SRA subreddit. It'll go exactly like the last time people tried this same thing (well I think it was a rent strike) like 6 months ago I'm sure.
The first thing on one of the websites OP of that thread linked:
We started this organization after we saw working class people launch a wave of labor strike and rent strike actions across the world in response to the severe negligence of our “leaders” as the pandemic has emerged. We were inspired into action by the workers and tenants and debtors who have already begun fighting and the hundreds of mutual aid systems which have spontaneously popped up everywhere
Just bragging about tailism I guess. There's also no common fund set up to support a sustained strike. Basically this is what lack of theory does to a mf.
Basically this is what lack of theory does to a mf.
Literally lmao. This is terminal online brainworms. Like motherfucker, how do you expect to lead a workers strike when you don't even talk to workers? Holding a food and literature drive in a public park would do more good than shouting into the void of Reddit. I'm gonna drop a Stalin quote that fits perfectly with this libshit, with some minor editing to fit this context.
Trotsky[These dipshits] takes as the starting point ofhis[their] policy of theatrical gestures, not concrete human beings, not the concrete workers of flesh and blood who are living and struggling inBritain[America], but some sort of ideal and ethereal beings who are revolutionary from head to foot. Is it difficult, however, to understand that only persons devoid of common sense take ideal, ethereal beings as the starting point of their policy?The Anglo-Russian Unity Committee -- J.Stalin
That's a excellent quote to capture exactly what's going on.
you don’t even talk to workers
Trots hand out newspapers, that's talking at workers
a general strike uwu
we can organize it all through posting fun propaganda posters to reddit! _
For real though, this stuff isn't necessarily bad. The rent strike had people I knew asking me about it because I'm one of the few openly communist people in my friend group.
Let them do PR and let people look at it and start questioning if there really is a better way. Then when this fails, that's when those of us who know what's going on can take hold of that momentum and direct it into useful organization.
Yeah, this general strike isn't going to go anywhere, but it's a hell of a lot better than the nothing there usually is in this country. Leftism has been constantly beat into the ground in the US, and it's going to take a lot of work to build up any real socialist movement. Calling for something big could easily encourage someone to at least try and help out locally. Organizing their own workplace in preparation for a nation wide general strike, for example.
Breast thing about them is they are great ways to treat the waters for free, no risk really because it's just a "national event", but you can still pretty quickly find co-workers who are open to organizing
Ask all your coworkers to organize but "only ironically tho" if your boss asks what you're doing
"did you see that ludicrous post last night? What's all this about a general strike?"
we can organize it all through posting fun propaganda posters to reddit! _
neoliberalism.txt
Michael Scott running into the office and screaming "I declare... General strike!"
I see it more as a method of publicising and spreading the idea of the need for a general strike rather than a strike in and of itself. It is obviously going to fail if it doesn't get unions on board, but it will also act as education. That's what the rent strike really achieved. The knock on effects of which was that it produced a shit load of local organisers who did small scale rent strikes.
Obviously no one thinks its going to do anything but its not like anyone has any better ideas around here
This is what happens when your only idea of organization is dunking on people on Twitter
I would rather have people shouting "strike" in the streets than not have people shouting "strike" in the streets
