At some point you have to discuss the best course of action, and some actions genuinely hamper progress, so we're never going to be rid of this sort of article. It's necessary, to a degree.
I think the proper approach is a mix of agnosticism -- no one really knows the best path forward -- and a healthy amount of deference to people out there trying something.
The deference is huge. The amount of negative “marxists” responses to the 2020 protests was outrageous. They acted like it was child’s play to be out in the street. Fucking what the fuck are you people doing?
If Trotsky wasn’t out their in the unorganized 1905 revolution, you think he would’ve been a leader in the 1917 revolution?
If Trotsky wasn’t out their in the unorganized 1905 revolution, you think he would’ve been a leader in the 1917 revolution?
I keep trying to impress the need to look at everything holistically rather than as individual events. While one single thing might not by itself achieve revolution it can have a significant contributory effect to future events through otherwise unknowable things occurring at that event.
Struggle for the sake of struggle has value in producing more people that will engage in struggle, as well as giving people valuable experience that they take into future struggles.
For sure. Social infrastructure and cultural knowledge is built over time. Shit goes down and people are making calls asking if people they’ve met in the past are gonna be there. There’s a whole network of protest medics in the US who are interlocked with each other.
So much of revolutionary potential is caught up not in general trends, but in the errata that alludes people specifically because it exists at the fringes. So we get very good at criticizing attempts at organizing because they failed due to the same trends we’ve seen over and over, but most of us never develop the skills necessary to praise the aspects of those failed attempts that went well, because the positives of failure exist in specifics.
I don't think the point was to suggest trots are good but that trotsky's leadership was extremely valuable and that he wouldn't have been produced without the disorganised stuff people criticise too harshly.
It’s not that activism is bad or that you shouldn’t be out on the streets, but the book promises to be something more radical when all it does is pay lip service to recent movements. Like, OK, cool but the title and preamble are selling this book as something more violent when it’s really just making money off the insignificant acts of protest that have already happened. In one sentence he praises the things he’s been a part of and in another he acts like what he’s ‘proposing’ has never been done before. It’s the same grift as selling Che Guevarra T shirts in NYC bodegas.
At the risk of :fedposting: or being too doomer, what power does the left in the west even have? Surely if you're going to be crushed no matter what then someone out there has thought that adventurism was the only thing they could do at all? (in minecraft GTAV RP)
The proper approach is to study what has and has not worked, and try to systematize the answers. So far, what has stochastic eco-terrorism accomplished? Why? What has the institutional environmental movement accomplished? Why? What have environmentally-oriented liberation struggles accomplished? Why? What have revolutionary environmental organizations accomplished? Why?
A diversity of tactics is a strength because it gives us more data to figure out what works. So while we don't know the exact path forwards, we should learn as much as we can about its shape from what information is available.
At some point you have to discuss the best course of action, and some actions genuinely hamper progress, so we're never going to be rid of this sort of article. It's necessary, to a degree.
I think the proper approach is a mix of agnosticism -- no one really knows the best path forward -- and a healthy amount of deference to people out there trying something.
The deference is huge. The amount of negative “marxists” responses to the 2020 protests was outrageous. They acted like it was child’s play to be out in the street. Fucking what the fuck are you people doing?
If Trotsky wasn’t out their in the unorganized 1905 revolution, you think he would’ve been a leader in the 1917 revolution?
I keep trying to impress the need to look at everything holistically rather than as individual events. While one single thing might not by itself achieve revolution it can have a significant contributory effect to future events through otherwise unknowable things occurring at that event.
Struggle for the sake of struggle has value in producing more people that will engage in struggle, as well as giving people valuable experience that they take into future struggles.
For sure. Social infrastructure and cultural knowledge is built over time. Shit goes down and people are making calls asking if people they’ve met in the past are gonna be there. There’s a whole network of protest medics in the US who are interlocked with each other.
So much of revolutionary potential is caught up not in general trends, but in the errata that alludes people specifically because it exists at the fringes. So we get very good at criticizing attempts at organizing because they failed due to the same trends we’ve seen over and over, but most of us never develop the skills necessary to praise the aspects of those failed attempts that went well, because the positives of failure exist in specifics.
Everything is easy to categorise as a failure until the revolution ultimately succeeds.
No he'd probably still be getting soup dumped on him for not tipping lmao
I feel like he'd be a wonton soup kind of guy
Removed by mod
I don't think the point was to suggest trots are good but that trotsky's leadership was extremely valuable and that he wouldn't have been produced without the disorganised stuff people criticise too harshly.
Trotskyists and Trotsky himself have worked really hard to ruin Trotskys legacy pre Lenin’s death.
Okay you're right about the protests tho.
2020 made me a crybaby
It’s not that activism is bad or that you shouldn’t be out on the streets, but the book promises to be something more radical when all it does is pay lip service to recent movements. Like, OK, cool but the title and preamble are selling this book as something more violent when it’s really just making money off the insignificant acts of protest that have already happened. In one sentence he praises the things he’s been a part of and in another he acts like what he’s ‘proposing’ has never been done before. It’s the same grift as selling Che Guevarra T shirts in NYC bodegas.
At the risk of :fedposting: or being too doomer, what power does the left in the west even have? Surely if you're going to be crushed no matter what then someone out there has thought that adventurism was the only thing they could do at all? (in minecraft GTAV RP)
The proper approach is to study what has and has not worked, and try to systematize the answers. So far, what has stochastic eco-terrorism accomplished? Why? What has the institutional environmental movement accomplished? Why? What have environmentally-oriented liberation struggles accomplished? Why? What have revolutionary environmental organizations accomplished? Why?
A diversity of tactics is a strength because it gives us more data to figure out what works. So while we don't know the exact path forwards, we should learn as much as we can about its shape from what information is available.