Expelling Bowman would mean handing the perfect tool to the establishment to stoke divisions within the Palestine solidarity movement, the left and the working class, and play into the strategy of divide and conquer. It is exactly what our enemies want.
Yeah I think you're right on the first point. Lenin taught me so much, but I still struggle with how much to / how much not to apply Lenin to our own context.
I used to read Lenin and go "haha he's talking about DSA cucks" but that changed when I actually started doing DSA organizing work. I'm under no illusion that "DSA can establish communism" or whatever, but in my city and my situation, we are organized in doing great and valuable labor solidarity work as well as political education. And I find that lots of online leftist's takeaways are that "lol you're in DSA but Lenin said you're a cuck" but I found that to be an incredibly demobilizing sentiment personally. I'm happy staying kinda ideologically agnostic on this because I've directly seen how useful DSA can be for labor.
I don't agree with you that DSA is only useful because communists have freedom to agitate. Considering how weak the working class is currently it seems a bit like a destructive ultra left position to me. And I struggle to even picture what that would look like, there really hasn't been any moment in the discussion meetings I've attended where I've been like "actually DSA is doomed and we need to be Leninists." In fact many comrades would probably agree with the criticisms of its contradictions.
And also let's be real, if you're organizing labor, much of that labor will be American boomers. I'm really just interested in growing people's class consciousness and hoping to push people to learn about socialist labor politics OF ANY FORM really. Maybe that's besides the point idk.
Yes, we seem to forget that while left-wing orgs were around the same size in the 1890s-1900s, there was significantly more stochastic worker violence and unorganised labour action than we see, and unions were much stronger. The base was far more conscious.
We're getting to that point (for better or worse), but I agree that as long as you're willing to highlight weaknesses and contradictions in a DemSoc org, and where possible agitate for a more hard line stance you're doing ok.
No, wrong continent. Unfortunately, to a first approximation, everyone not in AES lives in America, they just have radically different experiences of what that means.
Yeah I think you're right on the first point. Lenin taught me so much, but I still struggle with how much to / how much not to apply Lenin to our own context.
I used to read Lenin and go "haha he's talking about DSA cucks" but that changed when I actually started doing DSA organizing work. I'm under no illusion that "DSA can establish communism" or whatever, but in my city and my situation, we are organized in doing great and valuable labor solidarity work as well as political education. And I find that lots of online leftist's takeaways are that "lol you're in DSA but Lenin said you're a cuck" but I found that to be an incredibly demobilizing sentiment personally. I'm happy staying kinda ideologically agnostic on this because I've directly seen how useful DSA can be for labor.
I don't agree with you that DSA is only useful because communists have freedom to agitate. Considering how weak the working class is currently it seems a bit like a destructive ultra left position to me. And I struggle to even picture what that would look like, there really hasn't been any moment in the discussion meetings I've attended where I've been like "actually DSA is doomed and we need to be Leninists." In fact many comrades would probably agree with the criticisms of its contradictions.
And also let's be real, if you're organizing labor, much of that labor will be American boomers. I'm really just interested in growing people's class consciousness and hoping to push people to learn about socialist labor politics OF ANY FORM really. Maybe that's besides the point idk.
Yes, we seem to forget that while left-wing orgs were around the same size in the 1890s-1900s, there was significantly more stochastic worker violence and unorganised labour action than we see, and unions were much stronger. The base was far more conscious.
We're getting to that point (for better or worse), but I agree that as long as you're willing to highlight weaknesses and contradictions in a DemSoc org, and where possible agitate for a more hard line stance you're doing ok.
Yeah. Ultimately I think we're all disgusted by Bowman's actions, and it seems like a vast majority think it was a mistake to endorse him at all.
Out of curiosity are you a member / active in DSA? (Not a fed) :fedposting:
No, wrong continent. Unfortunately, to a first approximation, everyone not in AES lives in America, they just have radically different experiences of what that means.