For crying out loud. Things are not hopeless. Things might get harder (hell, covid has made turning people out to street protests harder) but that's not any reason to give up. If you're a socialist, you at least on an unconscious level are rejecting doomerism and the politics of despair. A better world is still possible even if conditions seem bleak right now and look like they're going to be horrifying for the foreseeable future. We can still organize. We can still reach our fellow workers. We can still fight back.
Trotsky wrote a very short article about how awful and hopeless things seemed at the turn of the 20th century. (I know it's early Trotsky who should be taken with a grain of salt but this particular writing aged well). This was his concluding statement:
It seems as if the new century, this gigantic newcomer, were bent at the very moment of its appearance to drive the optimist into absolute pessimism and civic nirvana.
– Death to Utopia! Death to faith! Death to love! Death to hope! thunders the twentieth century in salvos of fire and in the rumbling of guns.
– Surrender, you pathetic dreamer. Here I am, your long awaited twentieth century, your ‘future.’
– No, replies the unhumbled optimist: You, you are only the present.
Their dream lies in ruins and he got murdered thousands of miles away from his home, by people who used to be his comrades.
The century was a nothing but death and suffering and ended with the world humanity poised to finally kill itself via climate change. The people who did it are worshiped as heroes.
Even if what they built was mostly destroyed or distorted almost beyond recognition, there are still important lessons we can learn from the history of socialist movements. The Russian and Chinese revolutions were probably the most significant accomplishments of global Marxism (even if they can and should be ruthlessly analyzed and scrutinized for missteps, mistakes, and betrayals). These movements showed the world that it's even possible to establish a workers' state on a continental scale, and workers all over the world have attempted to replicate them. Lenin studied Marx's analysis of the failed 1871 Paris commune and applied those lessons in the Russian context. We can do the same with 20th century socialism as we push forward in our 21st century struggle.
I don't know, half the time on here it's just people literally telling us it's useless and we're just doomed to be shitty people by accident of birth. The other half is just people saying organize instead of vote.
This is false. I'm trying to put forward Marxist ideas, including many of the same ideas as my own organization (which I'm not gonna directly name-drop here, hello FBI). Other chapo users are attempting to put forth ideas, even if they're simply and crudely stated ones like "organize instead of vote". The organize part I can obviously get behind, but I tend to push back against pure electoral abstentionism when independent working-class candidates and potentially-useful ballot questions are on the table.
The online left (including chapo) isn't representative of the entire left either, there might be socialists trying to reach people like you both online and offline in or near your own community, especially if you live in a big city! At the very least there's probably some sort of DSA presence in a given large city, though DSA is a messy hodgepodge of liberals, Marxists, and anarchists and I would only consider working with them on non-electoral stuff, while not joining them.
Marxism is a methodology we use to understand the world as social and material conditions change. I'm not sure what would satisfy your criteria for "new ideas" but under novel conditions Marxists will sometimes reach new conclusions in response to those conditions (whether they're always correct is a different question). Even if the history of socialism features a lot of failure, there are occasional successes or partial successes that we can learn from. Every new movement gives us more empirical data to analyze, to put both old and new ideas to the test.
Maybe it's not helpful for me to talk to you right now. I'm trying to offer you the slightest bit of genuine hope - or at the very least some of the tools to actually figure out how to get even against the capitalist bastards who are wrecking the world - but you're clearly not absorbing most of what I've said. That's okay, I've had moments like these in the past too. You might want to go log off for a while and get some rest. Once you're ready, I highly recommend seeking out local leftists in your community that you can talk to and organize with in person (or even just on zoom). Talking only to randos online about socialism isn't good for anyone.
I'm a useless person who can't talk to people in real life.
edit: I've been in a horrible state since I woke up. :/
but you’re clearly not absorbing most of what I’ve said
No I'm just putting in low effort attacks without backing them up with any actual arguments.
The core problem is that the "organize" methodology is failed. They broke the unions. They have a massive propaganda machine. They use massive violence and just refuse to budge.
The left has no new ideas to combat that. Not on any level.
I don't know how to make you feel better but you may want to get some rest, maybe log off for a while, and come back to this thread at a later time when you're feeling better.
It only has to happen once to break the spine of capital. It's extremely difficult to take things away from people that improve their lives. Once people are shown an alternative, it's over for capitalism. They have to win every battle. We have to win once.
Yes it's depressing right now, but this thing is just starting. Quality of life is dropping so precipitously that the clashes are inevitable - when those clashes occur you'll be out in the streets, same with me. Will those lead to anything? Maybe not, but what's the alternative? None of us can predict the future. Every coup is a long shot until it actually happens, and that comes from the coup masters the CIA.
Class consciousness is awakening. The imperial core is dying and neither political party has any solution.
They don't need to win every time because once they lose they will just start killing and not stop until it doesn't matter that we won.
Turn on chapo and hear them gloating about the lack of a coup and essentially saying anyone concerned at any point is a fool. Look at the right, it's people who have no use for democracy anymore and want the killing to start.
Oh there will be mass violence, no doubt. Have you read the Jakarta Method? The protectors of capital will kill as many as possible to protect their hegemony. But if they're massively outnumbered it won't matter, because the math doesn't work out in their favor if the cannons are pointed in their direction.
We know their tactics. The only reason the Red Scare worked so well was because living conditions were great. Living conditions are shit now and getting worse. There is no alternative capitalism can offer. The New Deal was the thing that saved capitalism.
Yes, and it's why I cringed so hard listening to the beginning of the latest chapo. Reading that book and the way things happened.
Even the pessimistic leftists were mostly saying that Trump can't get it done, but look at the reaction from the right and realize that this is not liberals whining about democracy dying because Trump served McDonalds.
There are police training outfits putting out presentations claiming that BLM and Antifa are planning massive violence, that they have trained infiltrators and snipers ready to strike. Teaming up with foreign assets to coordinate. Going to overthrow the government.
America is not in a good state.
But if they’re massively outnumbered it won’t matter
Yeah, that's why they use state terror.
We know their tactics. The only reason the Red Scare worked so well was because living conditions were great. Living conditions are shit now and getting worse
Conditions were not great during the first, and the first was when socialism was strong. They beat it.
Knowing their tactics is only useful if you actually do something to take advantage of that. Forming a third party isn't taking advantage. Trying to rebuild the lost unions isn't taking advantage.
Anything they broke, we can rebuild, even if it takes decades. Maybe we can rebuild the unions and our parties differently this time, and find ways to make them harder to break.
We can counter their massive propaganda machine by building our own propaganda machine. This is why Marxist organizations publish articles on their websites! This is why some orgs still sell newspapers, even at a loss! This is why they put up leaflets and invite people to public meetings! This is why parties now establish a social media presence!
Even when dealing with explicit state violence, there are usually ways to respond and adapt in self-defense. Portland protestors responded to tear gas by bringing leaf blowers to blow the gas away and started wearing gas masks, just to give a novel example.
We know what the obstacles are, and proactively take measures to overcome them, or to figure out what the best measures are.
Why does it have to be a completely new idea? Why throw the entire historical memory of Marxism away? Generation X tried doing this in search of completely original ideas and it got them almost nowhere, compared to the progress made since Occupy in 2011.
This is where I disagree. Marxism is a science, not a dogma. We aren't acting identically to how Marxists did a century ago, because conditions are different and we have extra information to work with. There are tried and tested approaches that we know can work under certain conditions, which we still use because they've yielded at least limited, partial, or small successes.
There has been no progress since 2011, things have only gotten worse and we have no reason whatsoever to expect that trajector to do anything but steepen.
A bunch of libs who think socialism means free health care aren't going to change that.
He had more than any of us could dream of, and it took nothing.
Newspapers? They have a trillion dollars so in media enterprises.
Portland protestors responded to tear gas by bringing leaf blowers to blow the gas away and started wearing gas masks, just to give a novel example.
and in response the feds deployed their own blowers and the violence only intensified.
Ted Wheeler managed to win because a bunch of idiots just couldn't bear to vote for the alternative, so they split the vote. They went out of their way to do it. Why? Icky socialism and opportunistic idpol.
80% of portland wants an oversight board? Good luck with that, courts aren't going to let you do that. Contracts > Democracy, obviously. Just like they wouldn't let Seattle regulate the cops.
I mean honest to god the left in this country is so fucked that the state is about legalize murder and we have no response besides whining. It's hopeless. The only thing that will change anything is massive violence and societal collapse. That will only lead to worse places.
While you're jerking off with notions of a third party the world is being irreparably damaged and millions of deaths are going to follow.
Third parties are not a new idea. This happens to varying degrees constantly. You aren't going to win this way.
edit: I mean that article is 4 years old. You alter the numbers and you just print it again today.
All you're doing by building a third party is letting them pit their entire entrenched system against you. Then you whine and wonder why it didn't work.
Even if the biosphere mostly collapses and we're living in Mad Max hellworld or Spaceballs hellworld, so long as capitalists are exploiting workers this project is worthwhile. Socialism will win eventually if the workers can establish a position of sufficient strength and deal the final death blow to the last capitalist stronghold. Even if everyone on Earth dies except Elon Musk and a few thousand people who go to Mars, Musk's workers can and probably will eventually revolt against him or his descendants on Mars and establish some sort of socialist society there.
We're in this precarious position now only because the previous two generations of socialists saw the collapse of the (by that time very bureaucratically degenerated) USSR in 1991 and either gave up and took the grillpill, or desperately sought out radical/postmodern new ideas, throwing Marxist baby out with the revisionist bathwater. I refuse to make that same mistake, and I don't want you to make that mistake either.
Our generation is probably fucked but we can act now to make conditions less shitty or more advantageous for our descendants.
Neither am I. But guess what, other people in our generation are having kids, because anti-natalism isn't actually very popular. We have to give them the tools they need to fight back once we're too old and too dead to make a difference anymore.
I'm also not having kids because I'm just gonna die alone and miserable because I'm a worthless trash person who isn't capable of basic interaction with people.
You're almost certainly not worthless. If you provide value or are capable of providing value to society, if people would be materially or emotionally worse off if you died, you're not worthless.
I get no value of out life. I'm going to die miserable and alone and I'm too much of a complete misfit to change that and sometimes I just can't stand it and I need to post about it.
No it's hopeless.
For crying out loud. Things are not hopeless. Things might get harder (hell, covid has made turning people out to street protests harder) but that's not any reason to give up. If you're a socialist, you at least on an unconscious level are rejecting doomerism and the politics of despair. A better world is still possible even if conditions seem bleak right now and look like they're going to be horrifying for the foreseeable future. We can still organize. We can still reach our fellow workers. We can still fight back.
Trotsky wrote a very short article about how awful and hopeless things seemed at the turn of the 20th century. (I know it's early Trotsky who should be taken with a grain of salt but this particular writing aged well). This was his concluding statement:
Their dream lies in ruins and he got murdered thousands of miles away from his home, by people who used to be his comrades.
The century was a nothing but death and suffering and ended with the world humanity poised to finally kill itself via climate change. The people who did it are worshiped as heroes.
Even if what they built was mostly destroyed or distorted almost beyond recognition, there are still important lessons we can learn from the history of socialist movements. The Russian and Chinese revolutions were probably the most significant accomplishments of global Marxism (even if they can and should be ruthlessly analyzed and scrutinized for missteps, mistakes, and betrayals). These movements showed the world that it's even possible to establish a workers' state on a continental scale, and workers all over the world have attempted to replicate them. Lenin studied Marx's analysis of the failed 1871 Paris commune and applied those lessons in the Russian context. We can do the same with 20th century socialism as we push forward in our 21st century struggle.
I don't know, half the time on here it's just people literally telling us it's useless and we're just doomed to be shitty people by accident of birth. The other half is just people saying organize instead of vote.
No one has any actual ideas about anything.
This is false. I'm trying to put forward Marxist ideas, including many of the same ideas as my own organization (which I'm not gonna directly name-drop here, hello FBI). Other chapo users are attempting to put forth ideas, even if they're simply and crudely stated ones like "organize instead of vote". The organize part I can obviously get behind, but I tend to push back against pure electoral abstentionism when independent working-class candidates and potentially-useful ballot questions are on the table.
The online left (including chapo) isn't representative of the entire left either, there might be socialists trying to reach people like you both online and offline in or near your own community, especially if you live in a big city! At the very least there's probably some sort of DSA presence in a given large city, though DSA is a messy hodgepodge of liberals, Marxists, and anarchists and I would only consider working with them on non-electoral stuff, while not joining them.
New ideas. Nobody has any new ideas. It's just a mismash of failed fucking bullshit.
Marxism is a methodology we use to understand the world as social and material conditions change. I'm not sure what would satisfy your criteria for "new ideas" but under novel conditions Marxists will sometimes reach new conclusions in response to those conditions (whether they're always correct is a different question). Even if the history of socialism features a lot of failure, there are occasional successes or partial successes that we can learn from. Every new movement gives us more empirical data to analyze, to put both old and new ideas to the test.
Gee, maybe that's why the left is dead.
Maybe it's not helpful for me to talk to you right now. I'm trying to offer you the slightest bit of genuine hope - or at the very least some of the tools to actually figure out how to get even against the capitalist bastards who are wrecking the world - but you're clearly not absorbing most of what I've said. That's okay, I've had moments like these in the past too. You might want to go log off for a while and get some rest. Once you're ready, I highly recommend seeking out local leftists in your community that you can talk to and organize with in person (or even just on zoom). Talking only to randos online about socialism isn't good for anyone.
I'm a useless person who can't talk to people in real life.
edit: I've been in a horrible state since I woke up. :/
No I'm just putting in low effort attacks without backing them up with any actual arguments.
The core problem is that the "organize" methodology is failed. They broke the unions. They have a massive propaganda machine. They use massive violence and just refuse to budge.
The left has no new ideas to combat that. Not on any level.
I don't know how to make you feel better but you may want to get some rest, maybe log off for a while, and come back to this thread at a later time when you're feeling better.
There is nothing to do if I log off.
It only has to happen once to break the spine of capital. It's extremely difficult to take things away from people that improve their lives. Once people are shown an alternative, it's over for capitalism. They have to win every battle. We have to win once.
Yes it's depressing right now, but this thing is just starting. Quality of life is dropping so precipitously that the clashes are inevitable - when those clashes occur you'll be out in the streets, same with me. Will those lead to anything? Maybe not, but what's the alternative? None of us can predict the future. Every coup is a long shot until it actually happens, and that comes from the coup masters the CIA.
Class consciousness is awakening. The imperial core is dying and neither political party has any solution.
They don't need to win every time because once they lose they will just start killing and not stop until it doesn't matter that we won.
Turn on chapo and hear them gloating about the lack of a coup and essentially saying anyone concerned at any point is a fool. Look at the right, it's people who have no use for democracy anymore and want the killing to start.
Oh there will be mass violence, no doubt. Have you read the Jakarta Method? The protectors of capital will kill as many as possible to protect their hegemony. But if they're massively outnumbered it won't matter, because the math doesn't work out in their favor if the cannons are pointed in their direction.
We know their tactics. The only reason the Red Scare worked so well was because living conditions were great. Living conditions are shit now and getting worse. There is no alternative capitalism can offer. The New Deal was the thing that saved capitalism.
Yes, and it's why I cringed so hard listening to the beginning of the latest chapo. Reading that book and the way things happened.
Even the pessimistic leftists were mostly saying that Trump can't get it done, but look at the reaction from the right and realize that this is not liberals whining about democracy dying because Trump served McDonalds.
There are police training outfits putting out presentations claiming that BLM and Antifa are planning massive violence, that they have trained infiltrators and snipers ready to strike. Teaming up with foreign assets to coordinate. Going to overthrow the government.
America is not in a good state.
Yeah, that's why they use state terror.
Conditions were not great during the first, and the first was when socialism was strong. They beat it.
Knowing their tactics is only useful if you actually do something to take advantage of that. Forming a third party isn't taking advantage. Trying to rebuild the lost unions isn't taking advantage.
These are old ideas. These are losing ideas.
Anything they broke, we can rebuild, even if it takes decades. Maybe we can rebuild the unions and our parties differently this time, and find ways to make them harder to break.
We can counter their massive propaganda machine by building our own propaganda machine. This is why Marxist organizations publish articles on their websites! This is why some orgs still sell newspapers, even at a loss! This is why they put up leaflets and invite people to public meetings! This is why parties now establish a social media presence!
Even when dealing with explicit state violence, there are usually ways to respond and adapt in self-defense. Portland protestors responded to tear gas by bringing leaf blowers to blow the gas away and started wearing gas masks, just to give a novel example.
We know what the obstacles are, and proactively take measures to overcome them, or to figure out what the best measures are.
See that's not a new idea.
Why does it have to be a completely new idea? Why throw the entire historical memory of Marxism away? Generation X tried doing this in search of completely original ideas and it got them almost nowhere, compared to the progress made since Occupy in 2011.
Well you're doing the same thing expecting different results and you're doing exactly what every power structure is designed to stop you from doing.
It's insanity. It's like trying to fight a war by exclusively attacking the enemies most fortified positions head on.
This is where I disagree. Marxism is a science, not a dogma. We aren't acting identically to how Marxists did a century ago, because conditions are different and we have extra information to work with. There are tried and tested approaches that we know can work under certain conditions, which we still use because they've yielded at least limited, partial, or small successes.
There has been no progress since 2011, things have only gotten worse and we have no reason whatsoever to expect that trajector to do anything but steepen.
A bunch of libs who think socialism means free health care aren't going to change that.
They crushed Bernie effortlessly. Effortlessly.
He had more than any of us could dream of, and it took nothing.
Newspapers? They have a trillion dollars so in media enterprises.
and in response the feds deployed their own blowers and the violence only intensified.
Ted Wheeler managed to win because a bunch of idiots just couldn't bear to vote for the alternative, so they split the vote. They went out of their way to do it. Why? Icky socialism and opportunistic idpol.
80% of portland wants an oversight board? Good luck with that, courts aren't going to let you do that. Contracts > Democracy, obviously. Just like they wouldn't let Seattle regulate the cops.
I mean honest to god the left in this country is so fucked that the state is about legalize murder and we have no response besides whining. It's hopeless. The only thing that will change anything is massive violence and societal collapse. That will only lead to worse places.
Read this. We don't have "no response besides whining". https://isreview.org/issue/107/case-independent-left-party
While you're jerking off with notions of a third party the world is being irreparably damaged and millions of deaths are going to follow.
Third parties are not a new idea. This happens to varying degrees constantly. You aren't going to win this way.
edit: I mean that article is 4 years old. You alter the numbers and you just print it again today.
All you're doing by building a third party is letting them pit their entire entrenched system against you. Then you whine and wonder why it didn't work.
If you are trying to operate on that sort of timeline you've already lost.
Even if the biosphere mostly collapses and we're living in Mad Max hellworld or Spaceballs hellworld, so long as capitalists are exploiting workers this project is worthwhile. Socialism will win eventually if the workers can establish a position of sufficient strength and deal the final death blow to the last capitalist stronghold. Even if everyone on Earth dies except Elon Musk and a few thousand people who go to Mars, Musk's workers can and probably will eventually revolt against him or his descendants on Mars and establish some sort of socialist society there.
We're in this precarious position now only because the previous two generations of socialists saw the collapse of the (by that time very bureaucratically degenerated) USSR in 1991 and either gave up and took the grillpill, or desperately sought out radical/postmodern new ideas, throwing Marxist baby out with the revisionist bathwater. I refuse to make that same mistake, and I don't want you to make that mistake either.
Our generation is probably fucked but we can act now to make conditions less shitty or more advantageous for our descendants.
What descendants?
I'm never having kids.
Neither am I. But guess what, other people in our generation are having kids, because anti-natalism isn't actually very popular. We have to give them the tools they need to fight back once we're too old and too dead to make a difference anymore.
I'm also not having kids because I'm just gonna die alone and miserable because I'm a worthless trash person who isn't capable of basic interaction with people.
You're almost certainly not worthless. If you provide value or are capable of providing value to society, if people would be materially or emotionally worse off if you died, you're not worthless.
I get no value of out life. I'm going to die miserable and alone and I'm too much of a complete misfit to change that and sometimes I just can't stand it and I need to post about it.
Mostly I'm just quietly low key miserable.
I'm clearly not in a position to help you. Either log off and rest or go to /c/mentalhealth. Please.
I will do neither right now but don't worry about it I'm not gonna hurt myself or anything. Sorry to unload on you like that.